Russia ‘successfully tests’ its unplugged internet
(BBC)Russia has successfully tested a country-wide alternative to the global internet, its government has announced.
Details of what the test involved were vague but, according to the Ministry of Communications, ordinary users did not notice any changes.
The results will now be presented to President Putin.
Experts remain concerned about the trend for some countries to dismantle the internet.
“Sadly, the Russian direction of travel is just another step in the increasing breaking-up of the internet,” said Prof Alan Woodward, a computer scientist at the University of Surrey.
“Increasingly, authoritarian countries which want to control what citizens see are looking at what Iran and China have already done.
“It means people will not have access to dialogue about what is going on in their own country, they will be kept within their own bubble.”
How would a domestic internet work?
The initiative involves restricting the points at which Russia’s version of the net connects to its global counterpart, giving the government more control over what its citizens can access.
“That would effectively get ISPs [internet service providers] and telcos to configure the internet within their borders as a gigantic intranet, just like a large corporation does,” explained Prof Woodward.
So how would the government establish what some have dubbed a “sovereign Runet”?
Countries receive foreign web services via undersea cables or “nodes” – connection points at which data is transmitted to and from other countries’ communication networks. These would need to be blocked or at least regulated.
This would require the co-operation of domestic ISPs and would be much easier to achieve if there were just a handful of state-owned firms involved. The more networks and connections a country has, the more difficult it is to control access.
Then Russia would need to create an alternative system.
In Iran, the National Information Network allows access to web services while policing all content on the network and limiting external information. It is run by the state-owned Telecommunication Company of Iran.