Steps Towards an Ecology of the Internet#

{#authors} Anil Madhavapeddy¹, Sam Reynolds¹, Alec P. Christie², David A. Coomes¹,
Michael W. Dales¹, Patrick Ferris¹, Ryan Gibb¹, Hamed Haddadi², Sadiq Jaffer¹,
Josh Millar², Cyrus Omar³, William J. Sutherland¹, Jon Crowcroft¹

{.university-logos} {.uni-logo} {.uni-logo} {.uni-logo}

¹ University of Cambridge   ² Imperial College London   ³ University of Michigan

{.qr-code}

Paper: 10.1145/3744169.3744180

The sixth decennial Aarhus conference: Computing X Crisis
August 18–22, 2025 • Aarhus N, Denmark

{.remark title="Abstract"} The Internet has grown from a small set of protocols for end-to-end connectivity into a critical global system with no builtin "immune system". In the next decade it will likely grow to a trillion nodes and need protection from threats ranging from floods of fake generative data to AI-driven malware. Unfortunately, a breakdown of mutualism across the network means that surveillance capitalism is now the dominant business model. What can we learn from ecology to restore diversity into the Internet fabric?

{pause center}

{#coop}

The Internet's Cooperative Origins#

The Internet is a network-of-network of interconnected nodes, likely hitting 1 trillion this decade! It has been a deeply cooperative endeavour, based on the end-to-end principle.

{.definition #e2e-detail title="End-to-end principle"} The end-to-end principle dictates that application-specific functions should reside in edge hosts rather than in the network itself. The network remains "dumb" and just moves bits around. End nodes need to upgrade to evolve with user needs.

{pause center} Internet communications protocols are openly documented in thousands of freely available Request for Comments (RFCs) so anyone can build an interoperable version.

{.definition #rfcs title="The RFC Series, see rfc-editor.org"} The RFC Series contains technical and organizational documents about the Internet, including the specifications and policy documents produced by five streams: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Independent Submissions, and Editorial.

Further reading:

• Saltzer, Reed & Clark, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS) (1984)
• RFC 3724 "Reflections on the Evolution of the Internet Architecture" (2004)

{pause up} {#growth-crisis}

The Current Growth Crisis#

While the Internet's original openness originally made the tech giants possible, they have since hit efficiencies of scale that are crowding out the original network's diversity.

{pause} {.faang-overlap}

{.example #os-mono title="System software monocultures dominate the world"}

• A few operating systems dominate the landscape (Linux, Windows, macOS)
• Sharing source reinforces this monoculture (Android from Linux, iOS from macOS)
• Botnets can exploit millions of hosts in minutes due to this similarity

{pause center} {.example #middlebox title="Protocol ossification from middleboxes hampers new experiments"}

• Network middleboxes like home gateways have overly strict protocol interpretations
• They only rarely update (when did you last change your broadband router?)
• Old IoT devices become botnet targets due to lack of security updates

{pause center} {.example #service-central title="Services tend to centralize for convenience and economies of scale"}

• The fight against email spam resulted in Google becoming dominant for all email
• Cloud hyperscalars can outcompete small hosting providers with power efficiency
• Amazon crowded out smaller suppliers for deliveries with Prime

{pause up}

{#bio-analogy}

How Nature Fights Monocultures#

Nature abhors monocultures since they are brittle to external factors as the environment around them changes. A monoculture can collapse very quickly.

{.evolution-overlap}

{.definition title="Darwin's Theory of Evolution"} The theory states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.

{pause center} Biological processes exhibit both disciplined self-organization and natural selection for adaptation. Would similar concepts apply to Internet systems somehow?

{pause center}

Biological Defense Mechanisms#

Nature has evolved remarkably sophisticated defenses against pathogens over millions of years. Let's consider one familiar example...

{.fungi-overlap}

{pause center} {.example #fungi title="The Mycorrhizal Fungal Network"}

• Fungi take sugars from plants in exchange for nutrients from soil
• When roots first appeared the fungi association was already 50 million years old
• Responds to resource inequality by withholding/supplying nutrients to distant nodes
• Individual nodes specialize into cooperators, traders, selfish actors
• Soils packed with pathogenic fungi, yet plants have "handshakes" for friends
• Trillions of daily "transactions", yet the protocol hasn't been "exploited"

{pause up} {.remark title="Towards an Ecology of the Internet"} How can we learn from these biological systems that have builtin "immune systems" at many levels to kickstart more diversity in edge software?

{pause}

Artificial Intelligence is the problem, but also possibly the answer#

{.arch-small}

AI-driven attacks are extraordinarily effective and getting harder and harder to spot due to the rapidity at which they are being deployed across the Internet. We need defenses, but not the same defenses everywhere to encourage diversity.

{pause center} {.remark} Can we use local AI models to inject tailored individual mutations into our digital ecosystems? It needs to be safe, but not so safe that it takes a long time to deploy: there is protection in being slightly different from the herd when a digital pandemic strikes!

These are all currently thought experiments, and have not been deployed on live networks.

{pause center} {.theorem #antibotty title="Antibotty networks for community protection"}

• What if every host acted as an "antibody" for their local network?
• Local scanning beats global botnets: scan your friends and family
• Hosts can protect their neighbors; we are pretty predictable in our behaviours
• Need to isolate infected hosts, patch vulnerabilities, proxy traffic safely

{pause center} {.stack-overlap}

{.theorem #mutations title="Protocol Mutatis Mutandis to jitter code"}

• Use AI code models to inject targeted code diversity into our local software
• Biological parallel is DNA mutation or horizontal gene transfer in bacteria
• Internet protocol architecture separates machine language from machine thoughts
• Also an opportunity to individually tailor software to exactly what we need

{pause up}

The Centralization Problem#

The Internet has moved from mutualistic to parasitic relationships, with surveillance capitalism meaning a few giants extract value from billions.

But from the lens of nature, this makes these giants less fit over to adapt to environmental change, as they get "addicted" to advertising revenue!

{.remark #redecentralization title="The redecentralisation movement"}

• New architectures are emerging to restore the original spirit of the Internet.
• Federated Protocols: ActivityPub (Mastodon, Peertube), ATProto (Bluesky)
• User Agency: Decentralized algorithms give users control over their feeds
• Self-Hosted Infrastructure: Personal clouds, Databoxes, federated networks
• Historical Precedent: Email and DNS show decentralization can work long-term

{pause center}

"Rewilding" the Internet#

The Internet stands at a crossroads, where it will ossify under central control. Such a large network resists monocultures, but we need to nudge it in the right direction collectively.

• Current Choice: Continue parasitic extraction models or evolve mutualistic cooperation through deliberate engineering.
• Our Role: Foster islands of diversity, support redecentralization, build community borders around common-pool resources (Ostrom 2015)
• Managing Risks: There are many, but that's life! The frontier is where we discover new ideas, and we may be able to leapfrog closer back to digital equity this time around.

See "We need to rewild the Internet", Maria Farrell, Robin Berjon (2024).

{pause up}

Discuss these ideas with any of us!#

Anil Madhavapeddy¹, Sam Reynolds¹, Alec P. Christie², David A. Coomes¹,
Michael W. Dales¹, Patrick Ferris¹, Ryan Gibb¹, Hamed Haddadi², Sadiq Jaffer¹,
Josh Millar², Cyrus Omar³, William J. Sutherland¹, Jon Crowcroft¹

{.university-logos} {.uni-logo} {.uni-logo} {.uni-logo}

¹ University of Cambridge   ² Imperial College London   ³ University of Michigan

{.qr-code}

Paper: 10.1145/3744169.3744180

The sixth decennial Aarhus conference: Computing X Crisis
August 18–22, 2025 • Aarhus N, Denmark