[governance] Re: Russia plans to create independent web / internet

[michael gurstein]

This reminds me of an experience I had in Russia a few years ago.

I met with a research group in a smallish town outside of Moscow.  They had
been involved in theoretical physics but their research funding had
disappeared and in its place they had begun to to do applied research in
various areas including the Internet.

They were using their local town (about 30,000 citizens) as a bit of test
bed and what they had established was a coax based Local Area Network with a
television feed which carried off the satellite television signals, (I
presume pirated) games, local messaging/"email" (in cyrillics) and very
limited access to the Internet on a pay per message basis... From what I
could gather they were paying for one external Internet account for the
entire town and then providing some sort of distributed access to this
through their password protected local network...(before someone asks, let
me say that I don't know how all of this was managed technically and I
apologise in advance for any technical howlers I may have committed in my
brief description here...

All of this at very low cost (locally affordable) to the local citizens and
evidently quite significant satisfaction since they reportedly had a
significant proportion of the town attached to their network.

I have no idea where this initiative has gone since I ran across it... (my
understanding was that the group responsible were establishing similar such
LAN electronic islands in various similarly sized communities throughout
Russia...

The example is interesting for me as a form of "community network" of
course, but also I think in the context here as a way for creating thinly
inter-connected nodes in the larger Internet including with the localized
capacity to operate in whatever language script one wished with a "managed"
interconnection between these localized islands and the larger
Internet...(does this sound familiar to anyone...

MG

Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
Centre for Community Informatics Research, Training and Development
Ste. 2101-989 Nelson St.
Vancouver BC CANADA v6z 2s1
http://www.communityinformatics.net
tel./fax +1-604-602-0624

-----Original Message-----
From: Avri Doria [mailto:avri at psg.com] 
Sent: October 13, 2007 8:49 AM
To: Internet Governance Caucus
Subject: Re: [governance] Re: Russia plans to create independent web /
internet


hi,

perhaps i have my naive glasses on again, but i wonder what the real  
so what of all this is.
the Internet is a network of networks.  if someone builds a private  
network of some sort and then wants to have contact with the rest of  
the internet then some sort of gateway, or nat, or or other devie for  
joining dissimilar is put into place and the internet has grown again  
and encompassed more networks and more technologies.

and if someone really wants a private network, like so many  
corporations who have very tight firewalls etc, between them and the  
outside world or like some of these converged new telephone systems,  
so what?  stuff even gets through those firewalls, and i would  
contend that where there is the will traffic will get through.   
traffic will always get through.  and if somewhere it doesn't, and  
people want it to, some new bit of technology will come along to  
enable the traffic get through.  as for firewalls, it is not like  
they don't already exist.  and it isn't lke people aren't already  
finding ways around them.

in my eyes, naive though they be, the really cool thing about the  
Internet through its many years is how is absorbs most any other  
network or technology that rises up.  i see no reason why that should  
not continue to be the case.

i think that if Russia wants to spend its resources on developing a  
new infrastructure, good for them.  and at some point that new  
infrastructure will connect to the rest of the world's  
infrastructure.  and who knows maybe they will come up with some cool  
new technology.  and maybe some people who don't have access in  
Russia will get access.

a.



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