Measuring the Evolution of the Internet in the Age of Giants

The Internet has evolved into an essential cornerstone of modern life. At its core, it is seemingly still powered by protocols developed in the late 1980s. Since then, the Internet has experienced a colossal visible evolution, e.g., from delivering small text files over dynamic websites to highly interactive and bulky content that defines whole economic sectors. Notwithstanding, it is hard to believe that this change demanded no technological evolution, and in fact, research and industry have worked on many mechanisms and improvements to the core protocols. Today, we see Internet giants such as Google, Facebook, or Akamai controlling clients, servers, and networks driving these changes. Still, research has shown that these innovations often remain hard to deploy in practice as the Internet has condensed to supporting only a small set of protocols and parts of their features today.

In this dissertation, we design novel Internet measurement methodologies to gain an understanding of how the Internet has evolved from textbook knowledge, how it deviates from standardized practices, and how these discovered discrepancies affect Internet operation. To this end, we recognize the critical role of Internet giants and specifically investigate their impact on core Internet technologies.

In summary, our contributions demonstrate that Internet giants coin practical Internet evolution today. While they are keen to standardize their innovations, their configurations are often a well-kept secret. Their market dominance challenges the innovation of others, but even they are not immune to an abuse of their technology.