Russia has been ranked third worldwide in terms of the stability of its national Internet when facing possible breaches. Only the UK and U.S. networks are deemed to be more reliable. One of the main advantages of the Russian segment of the Internet, also known as RuNet, is its extensive infrastructure: there are more than 1,000 operators in the country, with dozens of them connected to foreign networks. But a proposal currently under discussion to transfer the control of cross-border data transmission to the state could have negative consequences, reports Maria Kolomychenko of Russian business daily Kommersant.
The RuNet occupies third place in terms of stability among national internet networks around the world, according to a recent study by the Russian company Qrator Labs, which specializes in countering distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The company made a map of the prefixes used by network operators and distributed them according to the national segments of the internet. Then, the degree of the impact of its failure on a particular national segment was calculated.
The operator on which the RuNet’s work is most dependent is Rostelecom. The company’s failure would lead to the global unavailability of about 5.5 percent of the networks in the Russian segment of the internet. The leader in the sustainability of the local network segment is the UK. In the event of communication problems at Virgin Media, only 3.4 percent of local networks would be unavailable. The U.S. came in second place; problems at its largest operator would lead to the unavailability of five percent of local networks.
“The greater the maturity of the market and its degree of diversification – in particular, the more that medium-sized operators have access to cross-border transfers – the more stable the work of the entire national segment,” Qrator Labs’s CEO Alexander Lyamin says.
Lyamin notes that the total failure of an operator is rare, but such cases occur.
“Three years ago, one of Russia’s five largest operators was completely down for 17 minutes because of DDoS attacks against its equipment,” Lyamin said. “Fortunately it happened at night.”
According to TMT Consulting’s CEO Konstantin Ankilov, there are more than a 1,000 active operators in Russia.
“When it comes to their own physical channels, few have cross-border flows,” Ankilov said. “These are mainly the major players at the federal level. At the same time in the last few years, the operators lease channels from existing players to the largest European communications data centers. It is affordable even for medium-sized operators.”
It is this large number of cross-border flows that the Russian government is worried about. Back in April 2014, a working group assembled by the presidential administration discussed a package of measures to strengthen control over the RuNet. One measure discussed by the group was to ban the connection of regional and local data networks with foreign ones. It was proposed that all cross-border traffic be carried out only through the networks of nationwide operators.
The Ministry of Communications is currently discussing amendments to the law “On Communication” aimed at ensuring the integrity and stability of the RuNet. The amendments include a paragraph on the need to oblige owners of all the autonomous systems that communicate traffic with foreign networks to “install technical means of control of cross-border traffic.”
On their own the new technical features mentioned in the bill do not threaten the sustainability of RuNet and do not cause damage, Oleg Demidov, a consultant at the PIR Center think tank consultant says.
“Their technical implementation can give the state an effective tool in the struggle against a number of network attacks including DDoS and MITM [man-in-the-middle attack; an operation in which an attacker interferes with communication between two parties],” Demidov said. However, the previously discussed ban on connecting regional networks with foreign ones “could lead to the degradation of the connectivity and sustainability at topology level,” he adds.
This story, which first appeared in Russian in Kommersant, was translated into English by Russia Beyond The Headlines, a syndication partner of East-West Digital News.
