Evgeni Super — Russia has started building its own Internet

by
Mike Norman
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Russia has started work to create a global satellite Internet system “Sphere”. The project involves deployment of a system consisting of 640 small satellites that will provide integrated communication, navigation and remote sensing throughout the planet. This incredibly complex but implementable task will allow us to create our own national system of access to the Internet and mobile communications, independent from third countries. However, this project is only part of a comprehensive strategy to strengthen the information sovereignty of our country.

Now we are working on building our own system of root DNS servers, independent of ICANN, which generally determine the operation of the global Internet addressing and most of which is now under the control of the United States. Based on the ideasof the father of China’s firewall Fan Binsina, which indicates possibility for several countries, such as Russia and China, to create a direct communication bypassing the root DNS servers in the United States.

Despite the fact that the Internet has long became a part of our lives, we are on the threshold of the Internet of things era, in which the importance of this network will increase. However, in fact, Russia is unarmed before Washington’s attempts to disconnect us, if not from an entire network, then from many of its important components, for example, electronic certificates. Unlike China, we do not have a country certificate, which means that with just one click “overseas” can create many problems for us, including in transportation and other critical infrastructures. And these are just some of the likely threats.

All our efforts are now aimed at overcoming this dependency as soon as possible. But it is important to understand that we are not talking about creating our own isolated from the world Internet. We are trying to ensure our ability to use the world network without being hooked up to the “foreign switch.” In case of successful implementation, users in Russia will not notice any inconvenience at all....