Why Russia is Building Its Own Internet

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 10:35 AM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Why Russia is Building Its Own Internet
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


[Note:  This item comes from friend Steve Goldstein.  DLH]

Why Russia is Building Its Own Internet
By Tracy Staedter
Jan 17 2018
<
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/could-russia-really-build-its-own-alternate-internet
>

Last November, news emerged that Russian president Vladimir Putin had
approved a plan to create an independent Internet by 1 August 2018, first
reported by the Russian news agency, RT. The alternate Internet would be
used by BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—and
shield them from “possible external influence,” the Kremlin’s press
secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told RT.

“We all know who the chief administrator of the global Internet is,” Peskov
said. “And due to its volatility, we have to think about how to ensure our
national security.”

Putting aside for the moment Peskov’s insinuation that the chief
administrator of the Internet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN), which abides by California’s state laws, would mess
around with Russia’s access to the network, the question remains: Could
Russia create its own alternate Internet?

“The answer to your question is yes,” says David Conrad, chief technology
officer for ICANN. The Internet’s protocols are openly available and,
because it’s a network of interconnected networks, it’s entirely possible
to recreate a different network of interconnected networks, he says.

Hypothetically, if Russia wanted to do that, it would need to duplicate the
hardware and software that currently manages Internet traffic. That would
likely involve setting up computer servers, copying existing databases,
updating security features, and reconfiguring some existing technology—in
essence, they’d need their own Domain Name System (DNS), the essential
technology that underlies the existing Internet and, among other things,
translates domain names (such as <http://for.example.com>) into the
computer-readable numbers that make up a domain’s Internet Protocol (IP)
address.

For an independent Internet, Russia would have to establish three main
components. They’d need a name space, which is a structure that organizes
the Internet traffic—the inquiries and responses for IP addresses—according
to a hierarchical scheme that resembles a tree. They’d need a root server
(and a root zone database), a network of computers that would be the first
to respond to Internet queries and point them to name servers further down
in the hierarchy. And they’d need to reconfigure their existing resolvers,
the computers typically managed by Internet Service Providers and which are
designed to initiate the queries that lead to the final result. Resolvers
also keep the responses in memory for faster access next time.

Building out the technical assets to manage an alternate DNS is not a hard
problem, says Internet Hall of Fame inductee and Farsight Security CEO,
Paul Vixie. “You could build that out of a shopping bag of Raspberry
Pisthat cost $49 each,” he said, referring to the inexpensive,
single-board, general-purpose computers.

The difficult part is getting users to buy in. Even if Russia could
persuade its own country to use their alt-Internet, getting others to do so
would take some convincing. Anyone who wanted to access the Internet–any
person, business, or government agency–from outside of Russia would have to
reconfigure their phones, laptops, computers, or other devices, not to
mention their routers and the DNS resolvers, to understand the new network,
says Conrad.

Devices would not be able to simultaneously use Russia’s Internet and also
the one managed by ICANN, says Vixie, or toggle back and forth between
them. There’s no software written that has the capability to see the
website http://for.example.comfrom the ICANN-run Internet and also see
http://for.example.com from the Russian-based Internet.

Once on Russia’s Internet, users would have access to only those websites
the alternative network recognized, says Vixie. The Internet could
certainly allow users to see all of the websites that ICANN does. But let’s
say Russia didn’t want its users reading Ukrainian websites. It could
eliminate the country code top-level domain (TLD) .ua, from its root server
and essentially disappear Ukraine.

[snip]

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