Measuring the Internet

The global Internet is comprised of independent networks that connect to one another. Its distributed nature makes measuring any aspect of the Internet on a global scale difficult.

There are many people, projects, and organizations that are collecting data on several facets of the Internet, but there’s no single site that provides a curated set of insights. To help address this gap, we’ve launched the Internet Society Pulse platform to help everyone gain deeper, data-driven insight into the Internet.

What We’re Doing

We collate data from several trusted organizations—our data partners—and examine Internet trends, generate reports, and tell data-driven stories about how the Internet is evolving.

Pulse is available to everyone, everywhere. Policymakers, researchers, journalists, network operators, civil society groups, and others can use it to better understand the health, availability, and evolution of the Internet.

Focus Areas

The Internet Society Pulse platform focuses on the following key areas:

Internet Shutdowns

We curate information about Internet shutdowns and disruptions occurring around the world, and look at the economic and human impact of these actions. Data on regional and national scale disruptions to Internet connectivity is included, as well as on application-level blocking and content blocking.

Enabling Technologies

New technologies are essential to enable the Internet to keep growing, evolving, and meeting the changing expectations of users. On Pulse, We present information on levels of IPv6 adoption, DNSSEC adoption, as well as data on the worldwide use of TLS1.3, HTTP/3, route validation and Route Origination Authorization (ROA) generation.

Internet Resilience

In this Pulse focus area, we track resiliency metrics using the Internet Resilience Index to help support the development of policies and infrastructure to improve Internet resilience at the local, regional, and global level. Our initial focus is on tracking Internet resilience in Africa.

Centralization

We present data on the distribution of the market shares of core web technologies and infrastructure. This helps show how services are concentrated among a few actors and countries or distributed among many, and to track how this changes over time.

Visit Pulse

Launching in 2022: Keeping Traffic Local

Local content is key to improving the performance and resilience of the Internet. We’ll track metrics and present data to share how the levels of local traffic vary by country and region. By tracking these metrics over time we hope to better understand the impact of new IXP deployments, the diversity of Internet performance, and contribute to the overall understanding of Internet resilience.

Get Involved

Collecting Data?

Are you collecting Internet measurement data that could contribute to one or more of our focus areas?

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Use and Share

We encourage everyone to use and share the text, images, and charts presented on Pulse.

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Find Out More about Pulse

Want to learn more about the platform and our work?

Visit the FAQs section

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