Things might have seemed quiet on our Measuring the Internet activities for the last few weeks, but lots of work has been taking place behind the scenes to ensure that the Internet Society’s Internet Insights platform will be ready for phase one of its launch in December 2020.
What We’re Working On
To help everyone gain deeper insight into the Internet, we’re consolidating trusted third-party Internet measurement data from various sources into a single platform – Insights. We’ll use this data to examine trends, generate reports, and tell data-driven stories. Insights will be available to everyone, everywhere so that anyone can better understand the health, availability, and evolution of the Internet.
Our Data Partners
Phase one of Insights will launch with an initial set of data that will help to illustrate two of our four focus areas: Internet Shutdowns and Enabling Technologies. We’re sharing data sourced from the following trusted third-party data providers and are working to integrate data from more organizations as the platform develops.
| Access Now | Internet shutdown event data |
| AFRINIC | Internet resilience data |
| Akamai | IPv6 deployment |
| APNIC | IPv6 deployment |
| CAIDA | Impact of Internet shutdowns on Internet connectivity |
| IPv6 deployment, disruptions, and shutdowns | |
| Impact of shutdowns on Internet connectivity, IPv6 deployment | |
| ICANN | DNSSEC adoption |
| Mozilla | TLS1.3, HTTP/3, and HTTPS adoption |
| Oracle | Impact of Internet shutdowns on Internet connectivity |
| KU Leuven, TU Delft, LIG | Tranco list of top websites |
| World IPv6 Launch | IPv6 deployment |
Initial Focus Areas
We’ve decided to concentrate on Internet Shutdowns and Enabling Technologies for the first iteration of Insights to help focus our work and to enable us to tell compelling, data-driven stories with the comprehensive set of data outlined above.
Internet Shutdowns
“An Internet shutdown is an intentional disruption of Internet or electronic communications, rendering them inaccessible or effectively unusable, for a specific population or within a location, often to exert control over the flow of information.” — AccessNow
Insights curates information about Internet shutdown events occurring around the world, and looks at the economic and human impact of these actions. We’ve included data on disruptions to Internet connectivity on a regional and national scale. We’ll also present data on application-level blocking and content blocking, which is where Internet connectivity remains available but access to certain websites or applications is limited.
Enabling Technologies
New technologies are essential for ensuring that the Internet keeps growing and evolving to meet the increasing number of Internet users and their changing expectations. Insights offers information about the global adoption rates of some of the key technologies that contribute to improving the Internet’s scalability, security, trust, and availability. In the first phase of Insights, we’re concentrating on TLS1.3, HTTPS, HTTP/3, IPv6, and DNSSEC.
Get Involved
We’ll launch the Insights platform before the end of the year and will soon be conducting beta testing with a diverse group of interested people including:
- Academics/researchers
- Network/IXP operators
- Internet measurement community members
- Policymakers
- Civil Society/human rights group members
- Journalists
- Internet end users
- Internet Society members
If you want to participate in beta testing, please sign up to our mailing list!
More information
- Follow us on Twitter at @isoc_insights
- Visit the Insights splash page
- Insights is part of the Measuring the Internet project. Find out more about our work here.
Image by Lukas Blazek via Unsplash