Overview
This joint report by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Society (ISOC) offers the first substantive look at the global impact of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). It demonstrates how coordination—rather than control—has driven tangible progress in the Internet’s resilience, reach, and trust.
Structured not as a retrospective but as a practical record of outcomes, the report draws from two decades of work across infrastructure, access, security, and policy. It offers grounded evidence of what coordination has made possible and what could be lost if support for multistakeholder cooperation erodes.
Key Insights
Infrastructure and Access
Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) more than doubled in Africa over a decade. In countries like Kenya and Nigeria, this growth helped localize traffic, cutting the delay in data travel (latency) from around 200–600 milliseconds to 2–10 milliseconds, and saving millions annually in international connectivity costs. The IGF enabled the sharing of best practices that directly contributed to this expansion.
Multilingual Access
Nearly 4.4 million domain names are now registered in non-Latin scripts. Through IGF-hosted sessions and stakeholder coalitions, Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and Universal Acceptance (UA) have gained critical momentum. In 2025, more than 50 global events marked UA Day, promoting linguistic access across the Internet ecosystem.
Security and Resilience
Today, 93% of top-level domains are secured using Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), which protect against forged DNS responses. In parallel, over 1,000 networks have adopted the Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS), a global initiative to reduce routing attacks. The IGF has catalyzed awareness, collaboration, and implementation of these safeguards.
Local Engagement and Policy Influence
More than 180 National and Regional IGFs (NRI) now form a decentralized backbone of year-round Internet governance dialogue. Initiatives like Youth IGFs and the IGF parliamentary Track are shaping national and international policy—including formal declarations on digital trust, user rights, and multistakeholder governance.
Community-Centric Innovation
From the Arctic to the Andes, community networks have grown through IGF platforms and the Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity (DC3). These grassroots efforts now inform regulatory change, including International Telecommunication Union (ITU) resolutions and national endorsements, and have helped close connectivity gaps in underserved regions.
Global Coordination Platform
The IGF has evolved from an annual convening into a living ecosystem. It bridges technical and policy domains, connects local with global perspectives, and enables distributed but aligned Internet governance. That structure is now both a model and a necessity.
Why This Matters
The report launches ahead of the 20-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20)—a pivotal moment that will shape the next phase of global digital cooperation. It serves as both a record of achievement and a warning: coordination works but is not self-sustaining. The Internet’s openness, security, and interoperability depend on it. If that cooperation falters, the conditions that have made the Internet thrive may not hold.
