Over the past decade, Internet centralization and its implications for both people and the resilience of the Internet has become a topic of active debate. While the networking community informally agrees on the definition of centralization, we lack a formal metric for quantifying centralization, which limits research beyond descriptive analysis. In this work, we introduce a statistical measure for Internet centralization, which we use to better understand how the web is centralized across four layers of web infrastructure (hosting providers, DNS infrastructure, TLDs, and certificate authorities) in 150~countries. Our work uncovers significant geographical variation, as well as a complex interplay between centralization and sociopolitically driven regionalization. We hope that our work can serve as the foundation for more nuanced analysis to inform this important debate.

翻译：过去十年间，互联网中心化及其对用户与网络韧性的影响已成为学界热议的话题。尽管网络研究界对中心化的定义存在非正式共识，但我们仍缺乏量化中心化的正式度量标准，这限制了超越描述性分析的深入研究。本研究提出了一种互联网中心化的统计测度方法，并运用该方法深入分析了150个国家在四个网络基础设施层面（托管服务商、DNS基础设施、顶级域名和证书颁发机构）的网络中心化状况。我们的研究揭示了显著的地理差异性，以及中心化与社会政治驱动的区域化之间复杂的相互作用。我们期望本研究成果能为这一重要议题的深入分析提供基础，推动更具洞见的讨论。