The Internet in ten years' time: Consensus and divergence within the Community

Launched as part of the Research & Development work carried out by Afnic, the Technology Backdrop Survey was designed with the support of Afnic Scientific Council and conducted by INIT. The purpose of the survey, which first went online in 2011, is to produce a common overview of current technological trends.

The 2014 edition of the survey was conducted online in February 2014 and collected 153 responses. The profile of respondents is as follows: 75% are Internet “professionals”, 25% are Internet “users”; 79% are French, and 21% non-French.

Respondents were asked about various major topics: “The Purpose of the Internet”, “The Global Architecture of the Internet”, and “The Internet Domain Name System (DNS)”. The first topic was open to all respondents, whereas the other two were open to professionals only.

The first topic focusing on the uses of the Internet highlighted the views of respondents over the next ten years with regard to Internet access, uses and content, as well as data storage.

Based on forecasts made by respondents to the survey, the backdrop consists of two types of assertions concerning trends: issues on which a consensus is reached among respondents (i.e. at least 70%), and ones on which there is divergence.

This year, issues on which there is consensus include:

• The DNS will remain the dominant naming and resolution system on the Internet.
• Country-code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) will retain their appeal to domain name holders.
• The main obstacles to the development of new uses of the Internet include:

• filtering / blocking of user applications on the Internet;
• the absence / weakness of communications security (confidentiality, privacy, etc.).

• Protection of personal data collected by service providers on the Internet will be inadequate.

Issues on which there is divergence among respondents include:

• Local DNS resolvers (on user machines) will represent a significant share, compared with ISP resolvers or “open resolvers” like Google Public DNS
• When the user’s queries are submitted to a third party’s resolver (own ISP’s resolver or providers of alternative resolvers), the use of alternative resolvers will exceed the use of their own ISP’s resolver.
• The different types of wired Internet access (DSL, fibre, etc.) will be neutral in the sense that these access media will let through all the traffic exchanged without judging its nature.

For further information

Results 2014

• View the summary of the results of the 2014 Afnic Technology Backdrop Survey (PDF – 700 Ko).
• View the report of the results of the 2014 Afnic Technology Backdrop Survey (PDF – 25 Mo).

Previous editions

To see the results of the first two editions of the Afnic Technology Backdrop Survey, please visit:

• Second edition (2012)
• First edition (2011)