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By Audrey Hingle —

QUIC: The Battle That Never Was

New research from postdoctoral researcher Clément Perarnaud and professor Francesca Musiani on the QUIC protocol reveals how tech giants like Google are reshaping internet infrastructure through standard-setting, raising fresh questions about power, governance, and digital sovereignty.

QUIC: The Battle That Never Was
Photo by Mathias Elle / Unsplash

New research from postdoctoral researcher Clément Perarnaud and professor Francesca Musiani on the QUIC protocol reveals how tech giants like Google are reshaping internet infrastructure through standard-setting, raising fresh questions about power, governance, and digital sovereignty. Need a QUIC explainer? Check out this WIP from the authors of How the Internet Really Works.

But first...

From Software to Society—Openness in a changing world

The new study from Open Knowledge Foundation “From Software to Society: Openness in a Changing World” by Dr. Henriette Litta and Peter Bihr takes stock and looks to the future: What does openness mean in the digital age? Is the concept still up to date? The study traces the development of Openness and analyses current challenges. It is based on interviews with experts, including IX contributor Mallory Knodel, and extensive literature research. The key insights at a glance are:

  • Give Openness a purpose.
  • Protect Openness by adding guard rails.
  • Open innovation and infrastructure need investments.
  • Openness is not neutral.
  • Market domination needs to be curtailed.
Read The Report

Correction

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QUIC, The Battle That Never Was: A Case Of Infrastructuring Control Over Internet Traffic

By Clément Perarnaud and Francesca Musiani

Recent research from Clément Perarnaud and Francesca Musiani explores the under-studied arena of Internet standardization by focusing on the adoption process and global deployment of QUIC (pronounced “quick”) , arguably one of the most consequential transport standards that the IETF has released in recent history. The authors demonstrate how this process is reshaping global power over the internet, with potentially long-term consequences for internet governance. Below they discuss the key findings of their paper.

QUIC is a transport-layer network protocol. In other words, it defines how two endpoints—such as a user's device and a web server—can establish a connection and communicate on the Internet. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), introduced in the 1970s as part of the original suite of internet protocols, has long been the standard way for moving data across the internet. Initially designed by Google, QUIC is often presented as an alternative to TCP. It provides a new technical architecture to communicate and encrypt data through the network.

What Can We Learn from QUIC?

QUIC is a case study in how powerful tech companies like Google are reshaping who controls the core infrastructure of the internet. QUIC offers a way to look at recent changes in the balance of power between “Big Tech” actors, other actors of the internet industry, and states. The protocol’s development highlights how private companies take part in the making of internet standards, how the growing influence of a few dominant actors impacts standard-setting, and about how technical debates over standardisation design details can end up shifting power and decision-making in internet governance.

Because QUIC was first created by Google, its  standardisation process offers a way to look closely at how Google can use its influence within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), one of the leading bodies responsible for developing and maintaining global Internet standards. When bringing QUIC to the IETF in the mid-2010s, Google came with a sophisticated working solution, it had already tested at scale and widely deployed across services like Chrome and YouTube. 

Yet, success in the IETF usually doesn’t happen alone and requires allies and coalitions. We examined how Google was able to gain the support of internet companies, network operators and state officials alike. despite early concerns that QUIC might hurt their business models, technical systems or security practices.

The Controversial Debate about Internet Consolidation

While QUIC is often celebrated for the many innovations it brings to the transport layer (including encryption), its deployment raises important questions about who stands to benefit most from its use, and how it may accelerate the ongoing concentration of power in Internet architecture.

Internet giants seem far better equipped to fully benefit from QUIC’ speed and performance gains at scale. Companies such as Google, Meta, Apple, Alibaba, Amazon, and Microsoft have all developed their own QUIC implementations—which vary depending on their use cases and design choices—but are expected to share the core of the IETF specifications, to ensure interoperability. 

Though it is far from impossible technically, smaller actors may find it harder or less beneficial to adopt QUIC. Currently, the limited adoption from smaller actors seems linked in part to the lack of technical support and regular updates needed to implement QUIC in many server environments. There is also limited awareness, or even appetite within large and small companies, in adopting a protocol that could affect the stability and security of their private networks.  

Despite QUIC’s advantages, this means that many actors will continue relying on TCP, even if it leads to slower performance compared to major services like YouTube. This shows why QUIC will not completely replace TCP in internet traffic. Both protocols are likely to coexist in the medium term due to the mixed incentives, motivations and resources of the many actors on the internet.

Our research shows that QUIC’s implications go beyond the  internet industry, it matters for states themselves. Some of the new features introduced by QUIC could be interpreted as a challenge to the ability of states, or national network operators, to analyze traffic and communications. 

QUIC and (Digital) Sovereignties 

This brings us to the final point, which relates to digital sovereignty and the role of states in shaping internet standards. QUIC was formally adopted at a time when many countries in the world, including in the EU, were advocating for their “digital sovereignty”, calling for more control over their digital infrastructure and standards. 

The analysis of how QUIC was developed shows that state actors were largely absent in these discussions. Yet, states were still “there”, somehow. States’ control over networks came up often as a central issue in debates, and was regularly used as justification for both limiting and expanding encryption of internet traffic. Our research highlights that the success of QUIC’ standardisation process partly lies in the successful pre-emption of states’ security concerns by Google in the design of the protocol itself, to ensure limited opposition to QUIC’s global deployment.

The case of QUIC raises broader questions such as: can “digital sovereignty”—understood as the ability to control infrastructure, data, and technology with minimal dependencies—exist not only for states, but also for private actors? If so, have large technology companies taken one more step towards their own digital sovereignty? To what extent are digital sovereignty claims becoming an explicit part of IETF discussions and, more generally, of standardisation processes?

For more, the open access article is available here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448251336438

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