Runet’s Resilience Declines
Experts from Qrator Labs have once again prepared an analysis of the resilience of national internet segments for 2022. This year, Russia dropped eight positions, moving to 10th place in the Top 20. Qrator Labs researchers studied, for the seventh time, how failures in backbone telecom operators’ networks affect the global accessibility of national internet segments (the first study was published in 2016). The research explains how the failure of a single autonomous system can impact the global connectivity of a region, especially when it involves the country’s largest internet provider.
Based on the study of national segments in 249 countries in 2022, a ranking was compiled in ascending order of a metric reflecting the dependence of national internet segment accessibility on failures of the most significant telecom operators (Tier-1). Operators were selected for the ranking if their failure could lead to the loss of global accessibility for the largest percentage of autonomous systems in a given national segment.
The comparative table of the Top 20 countries by the resilience of their national internet segments for 2021-2022 shows the following key changes:
- Thailand dropped out of the Top 20;
- Spain dropped out of the Top 20;
- The United States dropped out of the Top 20;
- Taiwan dropped out of the Top 20;
- Ireland, Belgium, and Hong Kong re-entered the Top 20 after leaving the ranking in 2021;
- Seychelles entered the Top 20 for the first time.
Experts note that the internet resilience ranking has been a fairly stable indicator of telecom development for many years, but 2022 saw several significant changes. Most notably, the United States continued to fall in the global ranking, dropping out of the Top 20 in 2022. According to Qrator Labs, this is mainly due to ongoing consolidation among telecom operators, who are investing more in additional user services—like video streaming and TV series—than in improving internet resilience.
Switzerland is another telling example. In 2020, the previously independent Swiss internet provider Sunrise Communications was acquired by the international conglomerate Liberty Global. As a result, according to Qrator.Radar measurements, Sunrise Communications and all its clients became fully dependent on Liberty Global’s routing policies. Due to Switzerland’s small size, this single event led to a dramatic drop in the country’s measurable internet resilience, causing it to fall from second to tenth place in the ranking.
Trends in Russia and Worldwide
Unfortunately, similar processes are being observed in several other countries, including Russia, where the percentage of potential network failures has been steadily increasing for four years. Analysts believe this is also due to ongoing organizational and technical consolidation in the industry. Therefore, the likelihood that Russia will also drop out of the Top 20 in 2023 is quite high.
The report also highlights that Russia is home to MSK-IX, the world’s sixth-largest internet exchange point, covering seven cities with populations over a million. Nevertheless, Russia continues to fall in the resilience ranking. Experts say this further confirms that Russia is not fully utilizing its enormous connectivity potential.
In 2016, a potential network failure rate just above 8% was enough to make the Top 20, but now even a 6.5% rate is insufficient to be among the leaders. Globally, there is a clear trend toward increased resilience: the average reliability metric improved from 35.84% to 26.7%.
“Despite ongoing consolidation in the global telecom market in most countries, this, with a few exceptions, does not negatively impact internet resilience itself. Autonomous systems are getting larger, but they are also establishing more mutual connections with other ASes. This network of autonomous systems is becoming more stable, and there are more available paths between points on the internet,” comments Alexander Lyamin, founder of Qrator Labs.
IPv6 Implementation and Its Challenges
Interestingly, the situation with IPv6 protocol implementation is still far from ideal. This year, compared to last year, overall IPv6 metrics have even worsened. Currently, IPv6 indicators are still worse than those for IPv4, since mainly large operators have begun implementing the new protocol. In some countries, such an operator might be, for example, Google, and if it fails, other players could be left without any communication.
“Due to the nature of IPv6 implementation, the instability of ranking positions is more understandable than with IPv4. For example, Russia’s IPv6 metric worsened by more than 1% over the year, which in the IPv4 ranking would already be enough to drop out of the Top 20. But since fluctuations in the list are greater and the requirements for ranking are almost twice as low, Russia has managed to hold its position in the IPv6 protocol ranking despite ongoing decline. Whether this situation will persist next year, and whether Russia will lose its place in both rankings, remains to be seen,” notes Alexander Lyamin.
Currently, global IPv6 deployment is around 40%, but it is expected that the situation will gradually improve if a major operator in a given region supports the new protocol on its network.