Internet Impact Assessment Toolkit > Do a Preliminary Analysis

Do a Preliminary Analysis

Use the table to do an analysis using the Internet’s critical properties and enablers.

This first phase of analysis will help ensure you’ve covered all potential issues. Once you’ve done this, share it with the Internet Society. We can help you validate what you’ve done so far, and suggest next steps.

Download the blank tables (.zip)

Tips

Impact won’t always be easy to identify as clearly positive or negative, but could depend on the context and implementation. Note that in the table, and in your full analysis.
Articulate the impact on the Internet itself, and then show the effect it could have on people and organizations. Show the causal relationships as best you can.
Sometimes a policy or decision can support the goals or critical properties in one way, but undermine them in another. Your full analysis will allow you to explore those relationships.
If an effect is particularly strong or weak, note it in the table.
Use the examples in our example table to guide you.

Use the Internet’s Critical Properties

The Internet Society describes the foundational architecture and practices of the Internet using what we call the Critical Properties. They’re what make the Internet survive and function as a global network of more than 70,000 interconnected networks.

Download the blank table (.docx)

Critical property	Is there an impact on the Internet? Is it positive, negative, or unclear?	How could this property or principle be affected?	What effect could this impact have on people?
1. An accessible infrastructure with a common protocol	Yes, strongly negative	How does this affect the ability of people or organizations to join the global network? Barriers can include network usage fees, artificially high costs for connection? Does it add or change government requirements around controlling flows or storage of data? Example: Telecommunications companies want to charge large content providers like Meta and Netflix extra for using their infrastructure.	The cost of access will be passed on to the consumer, widening the digital divide.
2. Open architecture of interoperable and reusable building blocks		Does this affect the ability of the components of the Internet to operate using their common standards and practices? Example: An ISP is required by law to inspect all traffic for potentially illegal content. This means they have to undermine strong encryption at the network level.	A bad actor could exploit this lack of secure traffic and hack into critical infrastructure, causing widespread damage.
3. Decentralized Management and a Single Distributed Routing System	Yes, negative	Does this affect the Internet’s decentralized model? Does it create or enable an authority that places restrictions on who and how people can access the Internet? Example: Canada’s Online News Act restricts the ability of people and businesses to use basic functions of the Internet like URLs, without paying for them.	Internet users in an area affected by wildfires are unable to use Facebook to share news about evacuations, and become stranded as a result.
4. Common Global Identifiers	Yes, strongly negative	Does this affect the ability of services to use the IP addressing system to find their destination? Example: In the EARNIT Act, traffic could be preemptively blocked, leading to over-blocking. It could block all traffic from a set of IP addresses, without a legitimate reason for doing so.	A health educator can’t access materials to teach their community about sexual violence awareness because the ISP has pre-emptively blocked the website as part of is scanning and filtering obligations.
5. A Technology Neutral, General-Purpose Network	Yes, strongly positive	Are services expected to show favoritism toward certain providers, or perform tasks that treat certain types of content or traffic differently? Example: Net neutrality is a policy that prevents services from allowing certain types of traffic to be preferred over others. A policy that helps the Internet grow while upholding this benefits the Internet overall.	Users can visit any part of the Internet without having to worry that they’ll be charged extra to access content that is otherwise free.

Download the blank table (.docx)

Use the Internet Goals and Enablers

The architecture of the Internet supports its goals. The enablers are a set of operating principles that can help you recognize whether or not a goal is being supported in practice.

Internet Goal	Is there an impact on the Internet? Is it positive, negative, or unclear?	How could this property or principle be affected?	What impact will this have on people?
Open
Easy and unrestricted access	Yes, strongly negative	How does this affect the ability of users or organizations to create new networks? Does it affect affordability and access among the general user population? Example: A government- controlled company holds a monopoly on the Internet in a country.	Slower Internet and higher subscription costs for users.
Unrestricted use and deployment of Internet technologies	Yes, positive	How does this affect the ability of a network or person to mix and match technologies, equipment, and devices? Example: An authentication method actually makes it easier for users to create accounts without sharing data directly with the service.	Users can log in to accounts more easily, making it easier for new services to be adopted and used.
Collaborative development, management, and governance	Yes, strongly positive	Does this support or undermine the collaborative, consensus-based model of the Internet? Example: A community-managed IXP expands access, builds community, and supports the foundational principles of the Internet.	Peering keeps the network more resilient, helping users to have access that’s easier, cheaper, and more reliable.
Globally connected
Unrestricted reachability	Yes, strongly negative	Does it support or prevent users from visiting websites or services that should reasonably be available to them? Example: A government-mandated filtering at the DNS level blocks traffic from reaching its destination makes the Internet less global.	Users can’t rely on the ability of a URL to reach its destination. It also reduces trust.
Available capacity	Yes, positive	Does this help or hinder the ability of users or organizations to access the Internet capacity they need? Example: By keeping traffic close to the users, an IXP can help to make connections cheaper, faster, and more reliable, increasing the capacity of the Internet, and users’ access to it.	A new, community-managed IXP makes the Internet faster and more reliable for everyone. As a result, more people are able to access the Internet and gain its benefits.
Secure
Data confidentiality of information, devices, and applications	Yes, strongly negative	Are there systems in place to prevent deliberate or accidental harm to the infrastructure? To what extent are users and services protected from things like botnets and phishing attacks? Example: The UK’s Online Safety Act forces services to break end-to-end encryption, even exposing private messages, leaving anything and anyone connected to the service vulnerable to attacks and bad actors.	A user sending pictures of their child’s skin condition to their partner is also exposing their message to bad actors.
Integrity of information, applications, and services	Yes, positive	Does this increase or decrease the ability of information to be transmitted without outside interference or access? Example: RPKI (resource public key infrastructure) helps ISPs to validate the traffic they send and receive, reducing the risk of things like IP hijacking.	Someone sending an email to a friend can feel confident that the email will get there in its entirety.
Trustworthy
Reliability, resilience, and availability	Yes, strongly negative	How does this affect the ability of users and organizations to access and use the Internet when they need it? Example: An Internet shutdown not only removes temporary access, it reduces trust in the Internet overall, which causes long-term harm.	A woman who relies on an online bus schedule so she can visit her family can’t travel safely, and stays home, experiencing isolation.
Accountability	Yes, positive, but weak	Does this affect the ability of users to identify organizations or institutions, or to understand decisions that have been made? Example: RFC 7725 makes it possible for a website owner to state that information isn’t available because of a legal demand, increasing transparency.	A student doing research can understand why their Google searches aren’t turning up information they thought they saw before.
Privacy	Yes, strongly negative	Does this support or undermine users’ ability to understand and control how information about them is collected, shared, or used? Example: The UK’s Online Safety Act forces services to break end-to-end encryption, even exposing private messages, violating user privacy and taking away their control over who sees their content.	A user sending pictures of their child’s skin condition to their partner could be falsely flagged for sharing CSAM material.

Download the blank table (.docx)