RFC 9707

Report from the IAB Workshop on Barriers to Internet Access of Services (BIAS)

📅 published February 2025, from ietf

Report from the IAB Workshop on Barriers to Internet Access of Services (BIAS) ✨

Okay bestie, here's the header tea 🫖💅 This is RFC 9707, an Informational doc from the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) 🎀. It was written by M. Kühlewind, D. Dhody, and M. Knodel, and it dropped in February 2025. Its ISSN is 2070-1721. The header doesn't list anything it obsoletes or updates, so it's standing on its own 🦋

Abstract 🌸

Okay so the "Barriers to Internet Access of Services (BIAS)" workshop was convened by the IAB from January 15-17, 2024 as a three-day online meeting 💻 Based on the position papers that got submitted, the workshop covered three big areas: the role of Community Networks in Internet access of services, reports and comments on the observed digital divide, and measurements of censorship and censorship circumvention 🌈 This report sums up what got discussed and is meant to be a reference for future reports on current barriers to Internet access 🧚

Also, this one's important: this document is a report on the workshop proceedings. The views and positions in it were shared by participants during the workshop, and they do not necessarily reflect the IAB's views and positions 🙈

Status of This Memo 💖

This doc is not an Internet Standards Track specification. It's published for informational purposes ✨

It's a product of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and it's basically info the IAB decided was valuable enough to keep on the permanent record 📜 It represents the consensus of the IAB. Docs approved for publication by the IAB aren't candidates for any level of Internet Standard, see Section 2 of RFC 7841 💅

For the latest status, errata, and how to send feedback, check https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9707 🫶

Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved 💜

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info), as in effect on the publication date. Please read these carefully, because they spell out your rights and restrictions for this document 🍓

Table of Contents 🌈

1.  Introduction
  1.1.  About the Content of This Workshop Report
2.  Workshop Scope and Discussion
  2.1.  Session 1: Community Networks - Their Role in Internet
        Access of Services
    2.1.1.  The Quality of Community Networks
    2.1.2.  Strengthening Community Networks
    2.1.3.  Discussion
  2.2.  Session 2: Digital Divide - Reports and Comments
    2.2.1.  Disparities in Service Provisioning
    2.2.2.  Lack of Consistent Acceptance of Language Scripts
    2.2.3.  Web Affordability and Inclusiveness
    2.2.4.  Discussion
  2.3.  Session 3: Censorship - Reports and Circumvention
    2.3.1.  Censorship Orders, Measurements, and Device Analysis
    2.3.2.  Use of VPNs for Censorship Circumventions and User
            Expectations
    2.3.3.  Discussion
  2.4.  Key Takeaways
3.  IANA Considerations
4.  Security Considerations
5.  Informative References
Appendix A.  Position Papers
Appendix B.  Workshop Participants
Appendix C.  Workshop Program Committee
IAB Members at the Time of Approval
Acknowledgments
Authors' Addresses

1. Introduction 🦋

The IAB holds the occasional workshop to think about long-term issues and strategies for the Internet, and to suggest future directions for the Internet architecture 🔭 This long-term planning work is basically the buddy of the ongoing engineering efforts happening in the working groups of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 🤝

The Internet is critical infrastructure now, and it affects lots of parts of society, just not all in the same way 🌍 It's a big tool for hitting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) listed in [SDGs], and for backing up human rights around the world. So not having meaningful access to digital infrastructure and services is also a form of disenfranchisement 😭

Having Internet access alone is not enough, bestie 💅 While we work on connecting the next billion people and closing the digital divide, we also have to understand the persistent and brand-new inequalities in the digital age when people try to access content and services 👑 There are more and more barriers to meaningful access to the services and apps that run on the Internet. Even if you have connectivity, getting to information and services can still be hard and unequal 💀

This IAB workshop was trying to:

  • collect reports about barriers to accessing content and services on the Internet -- for example, based on filtering or on blocking, or due to general inequality of technological capabilities, e.g., device or protocol limitations.
  • help the Internet community understand better how the Internet works in different parts of the world, and which technologies or techniques need to be used to gain access to content.
  • build an understanding of what "being connected" to the Internet means: What is the Internet to users? What is needed to be meaningfully connected? What are the minimum requirements to be able to access certain parts of the content and services provided over the Internet?

1.1. About the Content of This Workshop Report 🧚

This doc is a report on the workshop proceedings. The views and positions documented here were expressed by participants during the workshop, and they do not necessarily reflect the IAB's views and positions 🙈

The content of the report comes from presentations given by participants and from notes taken during the discussions. Nothing was interpreted or validated, so the report follows the flow and dialogue of the workshop, but it doesn't try to capture a consensus ✨

2. Workshop Scope and Discussion 🌸

The workshop ran across three days, with one all-group discussion slot per day 📅 The topic areas were identified, and the program committee sorted the paper submissions into three main themes, one for each discussion slot. During each discussion, the papers were presented one after another, and there was an open discussion at the end of each day 💬

2.1. Session 1: Community Networks - Their Role in Internet Access of Services 🏡

The first day focused on the role of Community Networks [RFC7962] as a way to overcome the barriers to Internet access 🌈 Community Networks are self-organized networks that the community fully owns. That makes them an alternative way to bring connectivity and Internet services to places that commercial providers aren't interested in 💜

The presentations went all over the place, from the need to measure Quality of Experience (QoE) for Community Networks, to the potential role of the Content Delivery Network (CDN), to the role of satellite networks, and finally to the vital role of spectrum in this space 📡

2.1.1. The Quality of Community Networks 💖

[MARTINEZ] highlighted that QoE needs to be addressed in discussions about Community Networks 🎀 Because these are community-driven deployments, the knowledge and involvement of individuals can vary, so there are no guarantees of connectivity or quality of service 🫠 The talk said we need to focus on user expectations and how those translate into measurable performance indicators. It also asked for better documentation of best practices for deploying Community Networks, plus careful thought about manageability considerations for Community Networks in protocol development 📝 [GUIFI] was discussed as an example Community Network, and participants shared some existing resources for Community Networks: [APC], [ISOC], and [TBB] 🔗

The inconsistent quality and performance of satellite Internet creates a connectivity gap for Community Networks that rely on non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) for Internet access [HU] 🛰️

2.1.2. Strengthening Community Networks 🍓

[BENSON] focused on how expensive transit and Internet services are for Community Networks. The talk argued that CDNs should provide transit-like and Internet services at no more than at-cost, in a mutually beneficial way 💸 Community Networks still need backhaul to and from the CDN's point of presence, and the talk highlighted models for community backhaul and open-source CDNs 🧠 The discussion also covered the status of Project PANGEA [PANGEA], plus the legal and commercial considerations around using CDNs this way ⚖️

[HU] highlighted that satellite Internet from advanced low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations can play a pivotal role in closing the connectivity gap in the urban-rural digital divide, through satellite-dependent Community Networks 🌌 The existing known performance and management gaps need to be focused on so satellite Internet can actually resolve the divide. Research directions were also suggested, like multi-layer satellite networking, autonomous maintenance, and integration between terrestrial networks and NTNs 🚀

[RENNO] called attention to the coveted 6 GHz band (part of the C-band, with a desirable mix of coverage and capacity) as a prime choice for International Mobile Telecommunication (IMT) for 5G technology. The catch is that it's already in common unlicensed use in Community Networks (and small ISPs) 😤 Spectrum allocations directly affect industries and market access, with ramifications for Community Networks. There was also a discussion about geopolitical tensions over unlicensed spectrum use and commercial interest in new spectrum usage 🌐

2.1.3. Discussion 💬

Okay, the big questions from this session: How can the technical community address the management gaps and improve best practices for Community Networks? Is the increasing complexity of the Internet making it harder to set up secure connections, and should that be taken into account in Internet design? What steps are needed to make sure Community Networks are secure? Should manageability considerations be expanded to explicitly cover Community Networks? 🤔

The Global Access to the Internet for All (GAIA) Research Group [GAIA] could be a venue for further discussion and research 🌏 Participants also highlighted the need for readily available knowledge and tools for Community Networks, along with the tussle with market forces when commercial networks compete with Community Networks ⚔️ And there's a lack of operational input from Community Network operators in the IETF/IRTF, which is kind of a big deal 😬✨

2.2. Session 2: Digital Divide - Reports and Comments ✨

okay so this session was the one that hit different 😭. Critical Internet infrastructure affects so many parts of society, but it doesn't hit everyone the same way 🌸. The unfair side is usually called "digital inclusion" 💜. It means that when everyone rushes to digitalize society, some people get left out because of what's called the "digital divide", a related term specifically about access to the Internet. Put together, these ideas show that even when Internet connectivity is available, some people still face challenges on the road to equality 💅. This matters even more because governments see the Internet as an important tool for reaching the SDGs listed in [SDGs] and for globally supporting human rights 🌍.

The second day of workshops was essential for understanding what the digital divide actually is 🔥. The reports looked at at least three key aspects, though it's recognized that there may be more technical aspects of the digital divide that didn't get covered 🙈. The three that were presented and discussed were differences between population demographics in how governments provide online resources, inequality in using multilingualized domains and email addresses, and increased costs for end-user downloads from websites of contemporary sizes 🎀.

2.2.1. Disparities in Service Provisioning 🦋

Ralph Holz shared research on how Indigenous communities in Australia have more limited DNS-mediated access to government websites than less disadvantaged users in the same population. It's in "Evidence for a digital divide? Measuring DNS dependencies in the context of the indigenous population of Australia" [HOLZ] and it's giving careful detective work 🕵️‍♀️. The team compared DNS dependency trends across two lists of domains serving Australian government sites, one for Indigenous users and one for the general population. They found "evidence that dependencies for the indigenous population are indeed differently configured," which points to a difference in service provisioning 👀. Still, the research isn't the whole story. Qualitative follow-up research is needed to dig into both the possible reasons for these differences and whether they add up to a digital divide that Indigenous users can actually feel 💖.

2.2.2. Lack of Consistent Acceptance of Language Scripts 🌈

Sarmad Hussain of ICANN talked about multilingual access to Internet services and content, in a talk called "Universal Acceptance of Domain Names and Email Addresses: A Key to Digital Inclusion" [HUSSAIN] 🧚. The ICANN community has expanded the options for multilingual identifiers by growing the Internet's DNS for use in domains and email addresses. But even though the technical specifications and policy recommendations are finished, there's still a ton of work to do before the Internet is truly multilingualized 😭. Right now there are around 150 internationalized domain names (IDNs), but getting these scripts rolled out evenly at the domain level is mainly blocked by software and applications that don't recognize the new scripts yet 💀. "Universal Acceptance" is a program of action for the wider Internet community that can make sure IDNs get accepted and treated consistently ✨.

2.2.3. Web Affordability and Inclusiveness 💸

Rumaisa Habib presented "A Framework for Improving Web Affordability and Inclusiveness" [HABIB], which looks at how website size connects to what end users pay 🍓. This work frames access in terms of affordability, and its measurements show that material costs have gone up for end users who pay for their connection based on how much data they download and upload, as the Web gets more complex 😤. The research also offers a framework for optimization based on end-user affordability, and it's grounded in reality 🫶. [HABIB] proposes a fairness metric and suggests systematic adaptations to the complexity of the Web based on "geographic variations in mobile broadband prices and income levels."

2.2.4. Discussion 💅

These three reports cover very different sides of today's Internet access inequalities around the world: service provisioning, availability, and economic costs 🌍. What's notable is that they describe trends that make the digital divide worse beyond the question of connectivity or whether users can access the Internet at all. That could give the IETF community some concrete ways to tackle digital inclusion within its remit 👑.

Discussants pointed out that while the digital divide has some interesting aspects, like measurements and frameworks, most of the work is about getting it in front of the right people at the policy level 📣. So it's important to communicate this technical evidence to those people. The IETF's role could be to build consensus on the right solutions presented to decision-makers, putting research and measurement not just in context but also in a consensus-driven solution space 🎯. Another way to communicate this research better is by telling stories of end users in more relatable and relevant terms. That's often hard at the technical level, and it's a job for more diverse stakeholders closer to the local level 🥹.

2.3. Session 3: Censorship - Reports and Circumvention 🕶️

This session focused on censorship reports from recent years in different parts of the world 📰. It also looked at how censorship circumvention tools get used and what people expect from them, mainly secure VPN services 🔐.

The censorship reports highlighted legal frameworks and court actions that put legal obligations on regional network providers to block traffic ⚖️. The discussion centered on Asia, especially India, and also included Russia as an example of a place where censorship practices have recently changed a lot 😳. Measurements that validate the blocking were discussed too, along with analyses of how blocking is implemented: which protocols are used, which kinds of devices are used to configure the blocking rules, and where those devices are deployed 🔍.

2.3.1. Censorship Orders, Measurements, and Device Analysis 🧐

[SAMSUDIN] reported confirmed blocking from 10 countries (Cambodia, Hong Kong (China), India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam) between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2023 📅. The blocking was confirmed by (1) Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) measurements for existing blocking fingerprints, (2) heuristics (for new blocking fingerprints as well as news reports of blocking orders), or (3) user experiences. Most of these countries block specific content like porn, gambling, or certain news pages 🙃. Interestingly, the blocking in Hong Kong and Myanmar focuses on the military and governmental pages of foreign countries 🤨. Blocking is often done through either DNS tampering or HTTP tampering. For DNS, either a chosen IP address, a bogon IP address (e.g., 127.0.0.1), or an empty domain (NXDOMAIN) is used. With DNS tampering that uses a chosen IP address, or with HTTP tampering, some countries show a block page that exposes the blocking. Even so, civil society organizations and the Internet Monitoring Action Project (iMAP) are asking for more transparency about blocking 📢.

[GROVER] took the discussion further, focusing on online censorship in India, Pakistan, and Indonesia 🇮🇳. In India, providers are responsible for implementing the blocking, but no method is mandated 🤷‍♀️. The six major ISPs, covering 98.82% of all subscribers, were tested on 4379 blocked websites. Those sites came from court orders, user reports, and publicly available or leaked government orders. The tests used DNS poisoning/injection, or censorship based on HTTP or the Server Name Indication (SNI). The censorship techniques and the websites blocked were different across ISPs. Multiple ISPs used two different techniques depending on the website, and all but one provided censorship notices. Providers blocked between 1892 and 3721 (of 4379) pages, with only 1115 pages (27.64%) blocked by all ISPs [Singh2020] 😮‍💨.

In contrast, in Pakistan, the government can also order ISPs to perform blocking, and blocking has even been observed in the past at the Internet Exchange Point (IXP) level. Since 2020, a central Web Monitoring System has also been deployed at lines of international connectivity 🛰️. In Indonesia, the government initially guided ISPs on how to perform the blocking. The regulations were updated in 2020 to let Indonesian ISPs block websites at their discretion. In 2022, ISPs proposed centralizing DNS. A partial blocklist is publicly available in Indonesia, but it doesn't say why anything is blocked [Grover2023] 🫠.

[BASSO] reported that for Russia, there was a large increase in additions to Roskomnadzor's blocklist in March 2022 and again in December 2022 🚨. It mostly covered news pages, but also human rights organizations and social media, and more than 3500 blocking orders were added to the list by an "Unknown body". Blocking of domains that aren't in the official Roskomnadzor blocklist has been observed as well 👻.

An invited talk covered the work in [WANG] on locating censorship devices using HTTP and TLS traceroutes, identifying device vendors through fingerprinting, and reverse-engineering censorship triggers through fuzzing 🧠. For example, in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, a significant portion of measurements from remote countries was blocked at the endpoint, which points to local policies. Connection resets were also seen happening in Belarus and Russia 💥. The team identified a set of commercial network devices, with filtering techniques such as firewalls, that are used in these countries for censorship. They also showed how fuzzing can be used to fingerprint and cluster behaviors, and how it can potentially get around the deployed methods 🔓.

All speakers called for more transparency, by requiring blocking messages as well as by publishing and auditing blocklists 📝. Standardization could potentially help too 💜.

2.3.2. Use of VPNs for Censorship Circumventions and User Expectations 🛡️

Later in the session, people talked about how possible and common VPN use for circumvention is, including what users expect and an analysis of security shortcomings in commercial VPN services 🕵️. The analysis in [RAMESH-1] highlights issues that lead to data leaks, like leaking IPv6 traffic, non-browser traffic, or failures in tunneling. These leaks mean users don't get what they expected, especially when they're trying to get around censorship or communicate privately under authoritarian regimes 😬.

Discussion also covered how common VPN use for circumvention is, and its legal implications, since VPNs are illegal in a few countries 🌏. For example, VPNs aren't officially banned in India, but VPN providers have to store log data, and those who haven't complied stopped serving India. More data on VPN use and blocking might still be needed 📊.

2.3.3. Discussion 🐭

After all of this, there's a cat-and-mouse game between censorship and circumvention 🐱. Still, continued work on protocol enhancements that protect user privacy is essential 🔐💖.

2.4. Key Takeaways 🧠✨

okay so here are the big lessons from the workshop, bestie 🫶

  • there's a need for the technical community to deal with the management gaps in running Community Networks 🛠️
  • we should write down best practices for operating Community Networks 📝
  • when we're developing protocols, we should carefully think through manageability stuff related to Community Networks 💅
  • build consensus on the solutions that make the biggest difference in fostering digital inclusion 🌈 promoting those solutions is how we make sure the efforts to bridge the digital divide actually work and include everyone 💖
  • more work should go into upgrading protocols so user privacy stays protected 🔒
  • develop more protocols (or extensions to existing ones) that bring more transparency to filtering, and promote their use and deployment 🔍
  • develop new VPN-like services and maybe support measurements to understand how they get deployed and used 🦋
  • further discussion of these topics could happen in the GAIA Research Group, the Human Rights Protocol Considerations (HRPC) Research Group, the Privacy Enhancements and Assessments Research Group (PEARG), and the Measurement and Analysis for Protocols Research Group (MAPRG), depending on which one is most relevant 🧚 management and operations discussions can go to the IETF Operations and Management Area Working Group (OPSAWG) 🎀 and the community could also explore whether a group focused on censorship (and getting around it) could be created 👑

3. IANA Considerations 🌸

literally no IANA actions in this one. nothing to register, nothing to update, zero paperwork 📭💅

4. Security Considerations 🔐

okay this part is short but mighty 😭 this document is a workshop report, and it does not impact the security of the Internet. so no new attack surface, no new vulnerabilities to panic about. still, keep those privacy and censorship lessons in your back pocket 🫶

5. Informative References 📚

these are all the sources we pulled from, with every detail kept so you can go find them 🔎

Appendix A. Position Papers ✨

okay so bestie, nineteen position papers were submitted to the workshop call for papers, and twelve of them got picked for publication 📝💖 the ones that didn't make it were either (1) only a super underdeveloped take on an idea that the workshop folks felt wasn't ready for discussion, or (2) they covered stuff that was considered outside what the workshop was for, like cybersecurity threats being a barrier to participation, or a technology being used to carry out a regulation that imposes blocking 🙈 those topics can be a seriously big risk for the open Internet, but they might be a high risk for all Internet users without necessarily meaning anything is unbalanced 💀

all the accepted papers live at <https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/biasws/materials/> 🦋

here's the full list of published papers, sorted by theme 🌈

Community Networks:

  • Martínez-Cervantes, L. M. and R. Guevara-Martínez: Community Networks and the Quest for Quality [MARTINEZ] 🌸
  • Benson, T. A. and M. Fayed: A 'C' in CDN: Access service to and from the Internet at cost for community networks [BENSON] 💅
  • Hu, P.: Closing the Performance and Management Gaps with Satellite Internet: Challenges, Approaches, and Future Directions [HU] 🛰️
  • Rennó, R.: Maximising Connectivity: The Spectrum's Vital Role in Technology Access [RENNO] ⭐

Digital Divide:

  • Holz, R., Nazemi, N., Tavallaie, O., and A. Y. Zomaya: Evidence for a digital divide? Measuring DNS dependencies in the context of the indigenous population of Australia [HOLZ] 🧚
  • Hussain, S.: Universal Acceptance of Domain Names and Email Addresses: A Key to Digital Inclusion [HUSSAIN] 🎀
  • Habib, R., Tanveer, S., Inam, A., Ahmed, H., Ali, A., Uzmi, Z. A., Qazi, Z. A., and I. A. Qazi: A Framework for Improving Web Affordability and Inclusiveness [HABIB] 💜
  • Ott, J., Bartolomeo, G., Bese, M.M., Bose, R., Bosk, M., Guzman, D., Kärkkäinen, L., Kosek, M., Mohan, N., Trossen, D., Welzl, M., and L. Vogel: The Internet: Only for the Fast? [OTT] 🏃‍♀️
  • Ohlsen, L.Y.: BIAS workshop - M-Lab Position Paper submission [OHLSEN] 🍓

Censorship:

  • Samsudin, S.: iMAP (Internet Monitoring Action Project) 2023 Internet Censorship Report [SAMSUDIN] 🔥
  • Grover, G.: The infrastructure of censorship in Asia [Grover2023] 👑
  • Basso, S.: How Internet censorship changed in Russia during the 1st year of military conflict in Ukraine [BASSO] 🫶

in addition to the submitted papers, two invited talks were included, based on published papers 🎤

  • Raman, R. S., Wang, M., Dalek, J., Mayer, J., and R. Ensafi: Network Measurement Methods for Locating and Examining Censorship Devices [WANG] 🔍
  • Ramesh, R., Vyas, A., and R. Ensafi: "All of them claim to be the best": Multi-perspective study of VPN users and VPN providers [RAMESH-2] 💀

Appendix B. Workshop Participants 🌟

the workshop participants were Arnaud Taddei, Carlos Pignataro, Carsten Bormann, Cindy Morgan, Colin Perkins, Cory Myers, Dan Sexton, David Guzman, David Millman, David Schinazi, Dhruv Dhody, Gurshabad Grover, Hanna Kreitem, Jane Coffin, Jiankang Yao, Jörg Ott, Juan Peirano, Lai Yi Ohlsen, Luis Martinez, Mallory Knodel, Marwan Fayed, Matthew Bocci, Michael Welzl, Michuki Mwangi, Mirja Kühlewind, Mona Wang, Peng Hu, Ralph Holz, Raquel Rennó, Reethika Ramesh, Rumaisa Habib, Sarmad Hussain, Simone Basso, Siti Nurliza Samsudin, Suresh Krishnan, Theophilus Benson, Tirumaleswar Reddy.K, Tommy Pauly, Vesna Manojlovic, and Wes Hardaker 🥰🫶

Appendix C. Workshop Program Committee 👑

the workshop program committee members were Christopher Wood (IAB, Cloudflare), Dhruv Dhody (IAB, Huawei), Mallory Knodel (IAB, Center for Democracy and Technology), Mirja Kühlewind (IAB, Ericsson), and Tommy Pauly (IAB, Apple) 💅✨

IAB Members at the Time of Approval 🦋

Internet Architecture Board members at the time this document was approved for publication were:

  • Matthew Bocci
  • Alissa Cooper
  • Roman Danyliw
  • Dhruv Dhody
  • Wes Hardaker
  • Cullen Jennings
  • Suresh Krishnan
  • Mirja Kühlewind
  • Tommy Pauly
  • Alvaro Retana
  • David Schinazi
  • Christopher Wood
  • Qin Wu

Acknowledgments 🎀

thanks to Arnaud Taddei for helpful suggestions to improve this report 🫶💖

Authors' Addresses 💌

Mirja Kühlewind Email: ietf@kuehlewind.net

Dhruv Dhody Email: dd@dhruvdhody.com

Mallory Knodel Email: Mallory.knodel@nyu.edu

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