Internet Network Shutdowns in Russia
There have been several calls for Russian Internet networks to be shut down in one way or another and announcements that Russia is going to make such cuts. In this article, Stéphane Bortzmeyer explores the issue from a technical point of view.
Great (and a good answer to the people who would like the packets to stay inside human borders) but small typo: the IETF working group on DNS privacy is DPRIVE, not DPRIV.
“This is a very important issue that researchers should keep in mind when running RIPE Atlas measurements. They may want to select their probe origins carefully, keeping in mind that some DNS or HTTP requests would cause trouble for the probe host. While RIPE Atlas already has relevant measures to prevent eventual misuse, but some normal requests may trigger alerts in some networks that is undesired for probe hosts. On the other hand I believe people hosting probes should also be aware of such potential issues, when deploying in networks with strict policies (or have IDS monitoring their traffic) or in regions with restrictive regulations.”
@Babak HTTP requests cannot create a problem today, since they are directed only to the Anchors. Indeed, one of the reasons of this limitation is precisely the risk for the probe owner. DNS requests can be more dangerous. Today, they are less often monitored than HTTP requests in most cases, so they are often "under the radar", but this may change in the future (NSA's MoreCowBell and so on). Warning probe owners of the potential risks is certainly a good thing. We must be aware that it will mean, in the future, less probes in what are precisely the most interesting countries :-(
One can note that such an incident with censorship already happened in Denmark http://www.computerworld.dk/art/214431/koks-hos-dansk-politi-spaerrer-for-8-000-websites Unfortunately, on the Internet, the experience is useless :-(
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