The Growing Threat of Internet Consolidation: Lessons from Recent Outages

The global dependence on a small number of Internet infrastructure providers continues to pose significant risks, as highlighted by the Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025. This major technical disruption had cascading effects, impacting countless websites and online services worldwide. The incident was triggered by a database permission issue, which quickly amplified into a global problem, underlining a troubling pattern of fragility in the modern Internet.

The Consequences of Internet Consolidation

Recent outages, including the Cloudflare incident, reveal the inherent risks of centralization within the Internet’s infrastructure. The Internet Society’s Pulse Internet Concentration tracker shows an alarming rise in the concentration of the Content Delivery Network (CDN) market over recent years. Measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), these figures illustrate a worrying trend. Since just June 2021, the concentration metric for the top 10,000 most visited websites globally increased to a level signifying “high market concentration.” When major infrastructure providers face technical issues, the ripple effects are felt across a wide array of sectors, including finance, healthcare, and transportation. The growing dependency on centralized systems magnifies the impact, turning isolated incidents into global emergencies.

Major Incidents Demonstrate the Risks of Dependency

The Cloudflare outage was far from an isolated event. Earlier in the year, a significant AWS configuration error disrupted streaming platforms, airline websites, and logistics worldwide, demonstrating the fragility of heavily centralized infrastructure. Similarly, Microsoft Azure faced a DNS issue that paralyzed services like Outlook and Xbox multiplayer functionality, impacting millions of users. As such, these outages highlight the deep interconnections within the Internet’s architecture and the systemic risks posed by relying on a select few infrastructure providers, such as Amazon, Cloudflare, Google, and Microsoft.

A Call to Action: Building Resilience Through Decentralization

Despite these challenges, abandoning CDNs or cloud platforms is not the solution, as they offer crucial performance, security, and operational benefits. Instead, organizations and policymakers must prioritize building a more resilient and equitable Internet. This includes adopting multi-CDN architectures, implementing redundant hosting solutions, and maintaining multi-provider DNS setups. These strategies promote separation of concerns, ensuring that failures in one system do not cascade into widespread disruptions.

Localized diversity in Internet infrastructure holds promise for improving resilience while reducing systemic risk. Regional and local service providers can help distribute dependencies and prevent single points of failure. Advocacy by groups like the Internet Society further underscores the importance of diversification to protect critical sectors such as finance, e-government, and healthcare. Ultimately, cultivating a balanced and distributed Internet ecosystem safeguards privacy, ensures competition, and fortifies national security.

Looking Ahead: Creating a Stable Future

As the Internet continues to evolve, understanding its structural dependencies becomes critical for long-term resilience. The Internet Society’s ongoing research and analysis, including its consolidation trends tracking, offers invaluable insights for decision-makers, researchers, and advocates. Building a decentralized, fail-safe Internet is not only vital for sustaining digital accessibility but also for fostering innovation and equity across the global digital landscape.

While addressing Internet consolidation is a significant challenge, implementing robust, redundant systems and prioritizing localized solutions can substantially mitigate risks. By doing so, we can create an Internet that resists disruptions, safeguards essential services, and serves as a more inclusive and resilient tool for the future.