Evidence of Decreasing Internet Entropy: The Lack of Redundancy in DNS Resolution by Major Websites and Services

Samantha Bates, John Bowers, Shane Greenstein, Jordi Weinstock, Yunhan Xu and Jonathan Zittrain

No 24317, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper analyzes the extent to which the Internet’s global domain name resolution (DNS) system has preserved its distributed resilience given the rise of cloud-based hosting and infrastructure. We explore trends in the concentration of the DNS space since at least 2011. In addition, we examine changes in domains’ tendency to “diversify” their pool of nameservers – how frequently domains employ DNS management services from multiple providers rather than just one provider – a comparatively costless and therefore puzzlingly rare decision that could supply redundancy and resilience in the event of an attack or service outage affecting one provider.

JEL-codes: L2 L22 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict and nep-pay
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