Authorities Carry Out Command – Staff Drills on Restriction of Access to Runet

In the morning on the 31^st of January a part of domain names of Runet appeared to be not delegated, that is not adhered to DNS-server which defines what domain corresponds to what IP-address. Malfunctions started because of the failure in RU-Center - the largest, actually exclusive national registrar of domains. There are, of course, in the Russian Federation other registrars but RU-Center is actual "daughter" of RosNIIROS which began at the state level registration of domains in Russia but two-three years ago completely transferred business of the company to RU-Center, which was initially created at RosNIIROS.

DNS-server on a regular basis updates databases. In case domains would appear not delegated for the period from six hours to one day, they can cease to be accessible to end users.

To a part of users the sites are already accessible only at direct IP-addresses. For example, to get to lenta.ru is possible having entered 81.19.69.28 address into address line. The corresponding address for rambler.ru - 81.19.70.3, for yandex.ru - 77.88.21.11 and for bash.org.ru - 89.111.182.137.

As bloggers write, database of RU-Center "has started to fall alphabetically". It is not known how far the process has gone. Users of a social network "In contact" already came across the problem of access. In Ru-Center, according to the user weissmann, approve that they need half of a day to correct mistakes.

- I already came across strangenesses of the company RU-Center, for example, when in 2004 year, during X congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation they "suddenly" transferred the domain kprf.ru, belonging to a party, to a group of some persons, - editor-in-chief of FORUM.msk Anatoly Baranov commented on a situation. - Then I was an editor of kprf.ru and I tried my best to return domain in a day or two. But on what basis the transfer of the domain from a party was made in general, I do not understood till now - it looks like, simply "on a call". And today's failure - is far not the first which happen to practically all Runet. At that all these failures always occur at the moment when the political situation is sufficiently strained. This is a strange "concurrence" but during the key moments very often a big layer of users in Russia appears to be cut off from the network information for technical reasons. I would connect it with constant conversations to restrict access to Runet, conversations about state control, about some legislative initiatives. Though today nothing resembles the law here - I shall remind the scandalous fact when in the end of November server FORUM.msk was simply disconnected on a post of the provider, without any lawful procedures, under the letter from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the reason to which was whether a letter, or a call from the CEC. By the way, senator Narusova connected directly with switching-off of FORUM.msk appears one of initiators of the new legislative initiative on restriction of Runet. So, we can't wait anything good from a new legislative initiative.

"In fact authorities constantly "do Runet a loyalty test", - Anatoly Baranov considers. - This or that way they are searching and find different sensitive places in the system. In response collective mind of Runet searches and finds roundabout ways. It's hardly possible to call such relations between the state and information environment positive. Moreover, if the state is on a way of technical and social progress - it's a bad state and as it is said in the Bible, "this empire will be destroyed in itself". Then, possibly, they will say that it was destroyed by the Internet as the steam machine destroyed feudalism. Actually the old bureaucratic machine is not capable to enter new information environment, to adapt for arising new relations in this environment and it will inevitable die off. But it will try to drag off with itself in a tomb as much as possible. I do not have doubts that "failure" with delegation of domain names is man-made, authorities carry out some kind of "command-staff drills", work out different mechanisms of "hour X". There is only one way for opposition - to be ready for such development of situation. Actually, we are ready - here you are our "mirrors" registered not only outside the Russian domain zone, but by the non-Russian registers:

forum-msk.org

forum-msk.com.ua

forum-msk.info 

Certainly, in case of negative development of situation independent participants of the process who are not in any type of opposition, who do not carry out any struggle and are not in preparation to anything bad will suffer first of all. We sympathize them, but we absolutely don't understand, how it is possible to remain "white and fluffy" when there happen around what is happening.

Most likely at "hour X" plenty of users will fail to enter the World net, supermonopolization of qualitative services of Internet access contributes to it. We shall admit, in Moscow MTU-Intel gives about a half of accesses on channel "Stream", another quarter goes to "Akado". For those to whom it is really important, we recommend to get reserve channel of access to a network, at least, to synchronize mobile phone with computer for a case of necessity of an output through GPRS. There are a lot of variants - one should remember about them.

- I believe that situation with access to the World net will remind in Russia - following "Putin's Plan" - what was happening with shortwave radio stations in Brezhnev's time, - Anatoly Baranov reminded. - Restriction of sales of receivers with a short-wave range, well-known "jammers" on perimeter of frontiers, even serious problems for those who listened to "Voice of America" and had imprudence at that to chat about it. It continued for two ten years, then failed. In many respects because of the fact that the system failed to adapt to the new and started fencing in from it. A fence collapsed at last and pressed down everything that was good in the system.

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