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Lumen and Cogent, internet backbone providers, are discontinuing routing traffic for all organizations based in Russia. They operate some of the largest Internet backbones and carry a significant percentage of the worldโs Internet traffic.
krebsonsecurity.com
Lumen and Cogent, internet backbone providers, are discontinuing routing traffic for all organizations based in Russia. They operate some of the largest Internet backbones and carry a significant percentage of the worldโs Internet traffic.
krebsonsecurity.com
A backbone carrier disconnecting its customers in a country the size of Russia is without precedent in the history of the internet.
Lumen is the top international transit provider to Russia, with customers including Russian telecom giants Rostelecom and TTK, as well as all three major mobile operators (MTS, Megafon and VEON).
Unlike China, Russia has not built a true indigenous capability. It relies heavily on Western technology for IT hardware, software and connectivity. China can supplement here, but it will be very costly and take time to set up.
This establishes a precedence of treating backbone connectivity as a weapon to be used against populations. Western IT companies stand to lose a lot in the long run if nations/service regions search for alternatives to avoid being cut off by the West when relations sour.
Just as alternates to Swift have developed (BRICS, MIR, Etc), so too will alternatives to Western backbone connectivity. China has done so already. Other nations may view this as the only course of action to avoid the Russian fate.
Internet Society President Andrew Sullivan said cutting a whole population off the Internet will stop disinformation coming from that population โ but it also stops the flow of truth.
internetsociety.org
internetsociety.org
The calls to cut Russia off are coming at multiple levels. Some networks around the world reccomend blocking Russian communication by blocking their BGP announcements. BGP, the Border Gateway Protocol, is the network protocol that allows the various networks...
that make up the Internet to negotiate their communicationsโeffectively, it is the โinterโ part of โthe Internet.โ
Attempting to convince all the networks in the world to reject some BGP announcements on political grounds is unprecedented.
Attempting to convince all the networks in the world to reject some BGP announcements on political grounds is unprecedented.
Once large network operators start demonstrating an ability to make routing decisions on political grounds, other governments will notice. This will attract regulatory requirements to shape network interconnection in real time along political lines.
If we travel that path, in short order the network of networks will not exist. In its place we would have a different network design built around national gateways, broken up on geopolitical lines, and just as dynamic and robust as other multilateral, regulation-based systems.
The Internet has done a lot to erode those systems because it is more efficient and effective.
Weโd give that up.
Weโd give that up.
And with it we'd be burying the global exchange of information as we know it. Censorship and approved narratives would reign supreme like you've never seen outside of places like North Korea or China. This is a REALLY bad idea and these things always wind up coming home.
Be Kind To Your Neighbors
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