The world's internet infrastructure does not have a central authority. Everyone relies on everyone else to make it work. As a result, the global intertwining of submarine cables, satellites and other technologies that connect the world often ignores national boundaries on the map. To stay online, many countries must rely on equipment outside their own borders and control.
Country-states periodically try to increase power over their Internet holdings, which can lead to blackouts. For example, last month the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo turned off its internet during a controversial presidential election. Russia now also wants to see if it can disconnect from the rest of the world - and the bill has already successfully passed its first hearing. However, Russia is much larger than the DRC, and its infrastructure is much more complex. Cutting yourself off would not be easy, and there will be many unintended consequences. In any case, even this project itself shows how confusing and powerful the Internet as a whole is.
But let's see what they think of this initiative overseas.
Russia disconnects from the Internet: what do they think in the West?
“So far, we've only seen that shutting down the Internet is much more difficult if you already have a stable Internet infrastructure in place,” says Andrew Sullivan, CEO of the Internet Society, a non-profit organization that promotes the open development of the Internet.
As it became known, the Russian "test" disconnection of the Internet will become part of a new bill proposed by parliament in December. The bill will require the country's Internet providers to ensure the independence of the Runet. The regulation prescribes that Internet service providers have technical means to disconnect from the rest of the world and redirect Internet traffic through exchange offices operated by Roskomnadzor, the Russian telecommunications and media regulator. Our country wants to check the independence of Runet by April 1 - this is what officials believe - although the official date has not yet been set, and the new regulation has not been adopted. It seems doubtful that everything will be ready in less than two months.
The Internet was invented in the United States, and American companies now control much of the infrastructure that supports it. Russia may simply want more autonomy over the Runet, but Russian President Vladimir Putin could also try to build up the country's cyber war power or increase censorship of online information available to citizens. While motives in the West are unclear, it is clear that Russia has spent years preparing for greater independence on the Internet. In fact, disconnection from the global network was first proposed back in 2014.
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The process itself remains complex. “In short, Russia will have to do two things: make sure that the content that Russians are looking for is actually located somewhere in the country; and make sure that routing and information exchange is happening in the country,”says Nicole Staroselsky, professor at New York University and author of The Undersea Network. Russia has recently tried to do both. In 2014, a law was passed that required companies collecting personal data about Russian citizens to store it internally. Sites that refused to comply, such as LinkedIn, were blocked. The country has also developed its own alternative domain name system, so that Russia can now access and route Internet traffic on its own.
However, no matter how much is prepared in Russia, unforeseen problems will almost certainly arise if the country tries to secede from the rest of the world. “I am absolutely sure that it will be so. The underlying infrastructure may not stop, but this is the risk they take,”says Paul Burford, professor of computer networking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is difficult for ISPs to know exactly how dependent they are on every piece of infrastructure outside of their borders. “Because of the complexity at all levels of the protocol stack, catastrophic failures can happen somewhere,” says Burford.
Even if disaster does not occur - for example, banks, hospitals and aviation continue to operate - many websites could go down. Most web pages use multiple servers that may be located in different parts of the world. For example, a news site might depend on the Amazon Web Services cloud server, Google analytics software, and a Facebook comment plugin, all of which are located outside of Russia. “Every web page is made up of a thousand different things. If a site works in Russia, you should know where everything comes from,”says expert Andrew Bloom.
What about everyone else? While the US is unlikely to be hurt if Russia cuts off access to the global web, verification could cause problems for other countries that route traffic through the country.
Trying to build a completely autonomous Internet, according to Western observers, Russia is actually creating a weaker one. The global Internet works so well because there are many workarounds for traffic - it is difficult to completely prevent information from reaching its destination. For example, if an undersea cable breaks between Europe and the United States, the communication will reach France in a different way. Russia wants to build a system in which it can take into account alternative paths and block them at will.
“This is a network failure. This is a new design that will make the Russian portion of the Internet less reliable,”Sullivan says. "If you design a system so that it can be shut down, then this system can accidentally shut down."
Ilya Khel