The Case for Breaking the Internet Apart (in a Good Way)

Today, when the term Internet is discussed, most users think of the worldwide computer network as a single entity. Indeed, is it really necessary for a modern user to think about what mechanism enabled a picture of a kitten to be downloaded onto their smartphone or allowed them to like a post on social media? After all, these days we’ve stopped counting kilobytes and waiting endlessly while listening to the grinding and squealing sounds of a dial-up modem.

One often hears phrases like “go to the Internet” or “look it up on the Internet,” but few stop to question where exactly they’re going or what they’re looking at. In reality, the Internet is an inter-network protocol that connects separate networks into one global system—a “network of networks.” These networks are built on a stack of protocols: channel, network, transport, application, and so on. So, it’s no surprise that the term “Internet” has become a catch-all for the technologies and infrastructure involved. It’s also convenient—a short, universally understood word. Just like how fax machines are often called Xerox, the name stuck.

For a global understanding of the Internet infrastructure, it is worth considering the physical implementation of data transmission and how the end user is connected. Other protocols are also interesting, but they are not so useful for a simple user and their description may take more than one book.

At the moment the channel-physical layer exists in the complex of active switching equipment and various media connecting them.

There are currently three transmission media:

• Cable media: fiber optic cables; cables made of metals. They are used both in trunk lines and for connection of end consumers, nowadays more and more for connection of stationary equipment. They cross and connect continents, running in the ground and at the bottom of seas and oceans. The laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable comes to mind. Provide high speed and stable connectivity. However, they are prone to wear and tear or breakage due to external influences. Late 2024 and early 2025 made headlines for damage to the backbone deep-sea cables connecting the countries, which is a fairly vulnerable point of failure for the system.

• Infrared radiation. While this method of data transmission was once mainly used to connect peripherals or link a control panel to a TV set, today, studies and experiments are accelerating around high-speed transmission of large volumes of data over hundreds of meters. Even just 20 years ago, infrared ports on smartphones were replaced by Bluetooth technology. It’s hard to judge the pros and cons until the technology—in its new reincarnation—achieves wider adoption.

• Radio waves. This is everyone's favorite technology, used from the radio receiver, to the smartphone or car navigator. Yes, cell phone technology or satellite internet is the use of radio waves as a medium for data transmission. And at the moment this medium and satellite internet in particular looks like the most promising direction. Not everywhere you can pull a cable or pass a beam of light, but with a satellite constellation, you can get access to the network even in the most remote jungle. This medium provides excellent mobility and access to the Internet from places where it is either physically impossible or economically uneconomical to lay a cable. However, connection speeds and stability are not as fast as in the case of cable Internet, and connection stability can depend not only on the distance to the broadcast source, but also on the materials of natural and artificial obstacles, whether the receiver moves, and even weather conditions.

There is no purely homogeneous infrastructure regarding data transmission media—our planet is vast, filled with rocks, water, and forests. Cell towers are connected over long distances by backbone cables, and the terrestrial infrastructure of satellite networks relies on cable networks just as much as cell towers do.

Regardingz connectivity, the end user is always limited to the set of hardware and software provided by the Internet service provider.

When it comes to mobile Internet, the connection is always via a radio channel—whether it’s through Wi-Fi equipment or a cellular base station. All we see in our hands is a smartphone; everything else is managed by our cellular operator.

The Internet that we use at home, no matter whether it is cable or satellite, usually requires a specialist from the ISP company and the installation of additional equipment: router, modem, or satellite terminal. In any case, between us and the direct Internet, there is always an intermediary, the provider—centralization. This approach has one big plus, the provider takes care of all the technical details. However, this state of affairs has quite some negatives:

• The provider determines the cost of our access to the Internet.
• The provider can censor your access to the Internet.
• The provider can collect data about you, and it will be personalized anyway, since you are each other's service contract.
• The ISP is a single point of failure, if there are problems on the ISP's equipment, there are problems and you.
• You cannot instantly change providers, you will need to terminate your contract, sign a new contract and wait for a new technician to come in and switch you to their intermediate communication equipment.
• Sometimes there is only one ISP on the ground, with all the associated costs to the end user.

Decentralization as a Solution

Transitioning the Internet to a decentralized model offers several advantages:

• Increased fault tolerance. Eliminating single points of failure ensures continuous connectivity, preventing disruptions to production and business processes. Critical data exchange will either remain uninterrupted in the event of a node failure or be quickly rerouted to another node. Imagine a complex telemetry operation at an Antarctic research station—if the only communication channel fails, operations could come to a halt.

  
  

• Enhanced privacy of personal data. Decentralization can help protect sensitive information by reducing reliance on centralized entities.

  
  

• Greater market competition. Decentralization encourages competition in the Internet services market, benefiting end users through lower costs and improved quality. Competition also drives innovation and progress.

  
  

• Broader network coverage. A decentralized approach can significantly expand access to communication networks, especially in underserved or remote areas.

The Internet of the Future

The Internet of the future will undoubtedly cover the entire surface of the Earth—and even extend beyond it—as man takes on other planets. Already, IoT is no longer a fantasy or an expensive toy: a refrigerator can order food, augmented reality glasses exchange data with a server, and a key fob tells you through your smartphone where your keys are. All of this increases the amount of data being transmitted and demands faster transmission and processing speeds. In this context, the centralized Internet model becomes slow, inconvenient, and insecure.

Design and ergonomics constantly dictate the properties and appearance of the objects around us, often prioritizing convenience and compactness. By making things compact, we cannot equip them with great computing power—at least not until the next technological leap. That’s why computing is already being decentralized into a distributed computing network. Decentralization of computing will provide high reliability and fast information exchange; for instance, the speed at which a car can communicate with the network could determine not only whether you get stuck in traffic but also how quickly emergency services are alerted in the event of an accident.

Given how interconnected cloud services are today, it is not uncommon for a service to be blocked by a state regulator under the belief that it violates the law—causing legitimate business tools to break and entire economic sectors to suffer losses and restructuring. A decentralized system can protect against sudden failures and censorship; it is far more difficult to centralize. Decentralization can also guard against DDoS attacks, as there is no single point of failure for attackers to target.

A decentralized approach to both data transmission and processing is inevitable for the Internet of the future.

Pros & Cons of a decentralized Internet

The main benefit of decentralizing the Internet is improved accessibility for the end user across all basic parameters: security, cost, quality, and coverage area.

However, a distributed structure requires more equipment—and therefore, higher costs. Transforming the existing centralized infrastructure can be quite painful, as it is a complex, heterogeneous system built on years of overlapping technologies and protocols.

In the decentralization model, the end consumer will have access to more ISPs. It is difficult to say unequivocally who will benefit most from the decentralization of the Internet.

The end user will enjoy increased service availability, along with improved quality—though potentially at a higher cost. Still, society is made up of individuals, and the more technologically advanced communication between individuals becomes, the more technologically advanced society as a whole becomes. In the end, everyone wins.

There are two obstacles to a decentralized Internet:

• The need for unified, technically compatible solutions.
• The high economic cost of rebuilding the existing centralized infrastructure.

In 55 years, the Internet has made a huge technological leap. There is little doubt that new technical solutions will emerge, and even existing infrastructure could become part of a decentralized Internet. A simple example is the constellation of satellites orbiting our planet, supported by sufficient ground infrastructure for fault tolerance. This already functions as a partially decentralized network—what it lacks is a decentralized protocol for end-user connection.

The economic aspect could be addressed by changing how users are connected, effectively making them investors in the project. Considering the benefits of uninterrupted business processes, large capital is unlikely to ignore the potential of decentralizing the Internet.

A Nod to Champions of Decentralization

Projects like IPFS or Filecoin were a discovery for me in my time. Real decentralized file storage systems that you could manage yourself, with minimal hardware and software resources. With all the limitations compared to hosting files on centralized services, for small developers, IPFS is a technological marvel, especially since the protocol was able to host static sites using IPNS.

And of course, in its time, the Helium project made a splash in the crypto space and beyond. There were months-long waiting lists to get endpoints from the company, which created a secondary market with inflated prices. However, the project has since undergone significant changes and unfortunately cannot boast global coverage.

Against this backdrop, Spacecoin is a very promising project. Starlink, led by Elon Musk, has already demonstrated the effectiveness of satellite constellations as a physical layer of Internet infrastructure. However, the bottleneck remains the provider itself, which can centralize access or impose high fees in the absence of competition. According to Spacecoin's documentation, the project aims to change how end users and investors connect—turning them into active participants in the network, with the ability to operate their own satellites and equipment as nodes in a distributed system. This is precisely the kind of decentralization the current Internet model lacks.

Conclusion

Decentralization is the cornerstone of human survival. Distributed food supply chains are important to us. Humanity itself is essentially a large decentralized system, it is how we evolved and continue to evolve, it is how we fight epidemics and survive crises and cataclysms.

It’s just as natural for us to decentralize the exchange of information. Resistance to censorship—and therefore manipulation—along with secure data storage and processing, align with the technological evolution of humanity as an intelligent species.

Technological progress has always been challenging, primarily because it threatens existing systems and those who benefit from the status quo. A clear example is the hysteria around 5G, which once swept the globe, even resulting in the destruction of infrastructure.

We need to shift public perception of progress using accessible communication channels. And we must create the right economic incentives—an area where blockchain and cryptocurrencies are more relevant than ever.