The phenomenon of essential infrastructure decentralization is a crucial aspect of constructing a more cohesive and sustainable internet ecosystem. The current state of the internet infrastructure is characterized by the dominance of a few key players, which has resulted in a heavy burden on the industry. With the cost of acquiring ASN and IPv6 address blocks decreasing, it has become increasingly more feasible for enterprises to join the internet infrastructure as a whole. Furthermore, the relationship between IPv6 coverage and the inclination of enterprises to hold ASN and IPv6 address blocks is interdependent and contributes to the amplification of infrastructure decentralization. In this context, network settlement between provinces can be seen as a beneficial solution. The key advantages of this approach can be summarized as follows:

  • The provincial settlement incentivizes local operators to prioritize terminating traffic within their local networks rather than routing it towards large, centralized data centers in more developed cities.
  • This settlement also discourages operators from overly relying on the network resources of developed regions for unsustainable marketing purposes, further aggravating the internet infrastructure ecological problems.
  • In an effort to remain competitive, local operators may opt to offer tiered bandwidth at affordable prices, thereby attracting content providers and allowing for mutually beneficial agreements between operators and content providers, ultimately resulting in improved user experiences while reducing backbone bandwidth consumption by local operators, and providing high-quality and affordable bandwidth for content providers to better serve local internet users.
  • The provincial settlement also exerts pressure on large content providers to establish more edge servers across the country, thereby eliminating the need for provincial CDN deployment.

It is crucial to recognize that, although the proposed solution has the potential to resolve the numerous ills plaguing the internet infrastructure ecosystem, it is essential to remain vigilant and adapt to the realities of the market. Moreover, if the settlement leads to operators and content providers compromising with one another, the vision may ultimately collapse, and the result would be catastrophic.