The Role of Network Centralization in Shaping Digital Sovereignty: An Analysis Under the DNS Lens

Centralization of Internet-based services in a few key players has been a topic of study in recent years. One of such services, the domain name system (DNS), is one of the pillars of the Internet, which allows users to access websites on the Internet through easy-to-remember domain names rather than complex numeric IP addresses. In this DNS context, the reliance on a small number of large DNS providers can lead to (a) risks of data breaches and disruption of service in the event of failures and (b) concerns about the digital sovereignty of countries regarding DNS hosting. As several essential services are provided through electronic government (E-Gov), it is highly important to be able to measure the digital sovereignty of a nation and the impacts that the lack of such feature can bring to its citizens. This work approaches the issue of DNS concentration on the Internet by presenting a solution to measure DNS hosting centralization and digital sovereignty in different countries, such as Brazil, India, China, Russia, and South Africa. With the data obtained through these measurements, relevant questions are answered, such as which are the top-10 DNS providers, if there is DNS centralization, and how dependent countries are on such providers to manage domains using their country code top-level domains (ccTLD). Future opportunities could investigate the impacts on sovereignty under the lens of other layers of the open systems interconnection (OSI) Network Sovereignty representation model presented in this work.