Iran designing its own version of the Internet

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iran-preparing-internal-version-of-internet/2012/09/19/79458194-01c3-11e2-b260-32f4a8db9b7e_story.html

by kevinburke • 14 years ago

49 47 14 years ago

washingtonpost.com

Sharma• 14 years ago

World is trying to get connected in every possible manner and here are some, want to isolate and have their own world.

soneill3• 14 years ago

Such is the history of authoritarian regimes. If North Korea weren't so backwards, I imagine they'd be trying to do much the same thing.

base• 14 years ago

North Korea has their own Country Intranet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_(network)

ceslami• 14 years ago

The people of Iran will suffer the most, unfortunately.

zingahgud3• 14 years ago

Oh man, that headline made me laugh.

rdl2• 14 years ago

Don't underestimate Iran. They aren't quite the US or Japan, but ahead of any middle eastern non Israel nation, probably ahead of India in many ways, and on par with Brazil or Spain or maybe Italy in terms of domestic engineering talent and ability.

jim_kaiser2• 14 years ago

On the other hand, they are not geniuses to solve the problems of internet security once and for all. All they might manage to do is stop free flow of information into and out of the country. The "Iron curtain" never helped anyone.

To use Huawei's equipment to achieve their national security needs is just naive. You might as well handover your country's internet infrastructure to China itself.

[EDIT: Added some links regarding Huawei (Whether the allegations are true or not, they are controversial and risky to trust):

http://www.truthalliance.net/Archive/News/tabid/67/ID/9347/C...

http://www.telecomstechnews.com/news/2012/sep/14/are-foreign...

]

zingahgud3• 14 years ago

I fear I was misunderstood. What made me laugh was the thought that the internet is a sort of wild west of ideologies and Iran, from what little I know, is a very tightly controlled ideological context. I did not even read the article. It's just the title that struck me as paradoxical. "Internet" == uncontrollable, Iran == tight control, "Internet" + Iran == WTF? Hope that makes sense.

I realise internet here probably just means a research network. I have tremendous respect for the Iranian people and certainly their computer professionals. From what little I've seen they are very bright. As for comparisons in terms of engineering talent I was thinking almost on par with Russia. If I'm way off the mark it just shows how little I know. Pay no mind.

dmix• 14 years ago

The modern Berlin wall.

joelrunyon• 14 years ago

How much of this is them "isolating" themselves and how much is it simply in response to the fact that they're cut off from doing commerce with much of the U.S. (and other countries?) due to trade sanctions, etc?

serious question I would like to know the answer to

kapitalx2• 14 years ago

What will likely happen is that Government entities/businesses and other large business organizations will apply for licenses to access the Internet for commercial use. This is purely an information control/censoring move.

soneill3• 14 years ago

I think it's more the former than the latter. Restricting or controlling the flow of information is a standard tool for authoritarian regimes; it's easier to control your population when you can control how they perceive the world. The Iranians have additional incentives in their national security concerns, as they'd obviously like to avoid a repeat of the Flame attack.

collinanderson5• 14 years ago

Every morning I wake up to dozens of articles in my Google Reader from Fars News, Mehr and IRIB that assure me that Iran's international trade is doing just fine without the West. Surely state media wouldn't lie...

angersock• 14 years ago

I wonder how willing they'd be to host dissident content for first-world nations. I wonder how cooperative the Iranian cybercommand or equivalent would be with US DMCA takedowns.

jon6• 14 years ago

I'm not a network engineer but is this all that difficult to do? I imagine if you control the AS (autonomous system) then you can control all routes into and out of the country, so they can easily block anything out of the country unless it comes from some known IP (like the computers of the elite class).

mindstab• 14 years ago

The internet is (obviously) one of the best examples of the network effect.

Sure you can technically wall of a subset of it and live on your own, but why would any sane person want to? I mean I get it, they want to limit access to non ideologically compatible ideas, which is most of everything.

But then that severely limits the utility of their new internet. Right now the economy is coasting pretty heavily on oil exports. If unlike say Qatar, they don't invest massively in more long term sustainable economic growth (which tends to require education, hence Qatar's massive education boom) then in a bit they are going to be pretty screwed. And cutting off this access to information is just so short sighted.

It's like blinding yourself because right now you can afford the servants to take care of all your needs. Long term, when you run out of money, you might wish you had eyes so you could earn some new money.

dfc2• 14 years ago

They will be able to harness a lot of the network effects of the Internet. Contrary to the linkbait title, they are not building "their own version" of the Internet; they are building a separate special purpose network of networks, much like SIPRNet. As long as they don't mess with any of the protocols they will be able to take advantage of advances in COTS hardware and software. Furthermore they seem to be taking advantage of China's surveillance machine. Instead of building their own version of the "panopticon router" they are buying China's.

Most importantly, your analogy misses the point about the Internet and the current power structure in Iran. If they do nothing to stem the free flow of information they will not be able to hold on to power long enough to run out of oil money. Comparing Qatar to Iran is apples to oranges. The political climate in Qatar is remarkably different than the political climate in Iran.

To a large extent your analysis is spot on. However you are assuming that the Iranian leadership is a semi-benevolent organization whose central goal is the betterment of the average Iranian's life. This is simply not the case in Iran. The Iranian leaders are more concerned with maintaining power and the destruction of Israel than they are with improving the lives of Iranians.

moo3• 14 years ago

The West also censors. My understanding is Britain censored Press TV for spurious reasons using front organization Ofcom. French embassy refused visas for Iranian reporters. Germany also blocks Iranian news. Noam Chomsky, an old man who preaches the Golden Rule, was refused entry into Israel. Lily Sussman had Arab characters taped on her laptop keys and the Israeli border security shot holes through it. Fretting about another countries surveillance on its citizens seems a little silly today. Ahmadinejad was also elected, the electorate preferred potatoes over Western appeals to be able to wear bikinis.

collinanderson5• 14 years ago

Hi, I am the author of the report and I wanted to clarify the technical detail that you get at. In fact there are two networks, a SIPRNet for the IRGC/MOI and the one that I cover. While I am still drafting my technical paper for arxiv, perhaps the abstract might clarify part of the argument.

"While foreign funding agencies have provided substantial support for the developers and vendors of services that facilitate the unfettered flow of information and opportunities for freedom of expression through the Internet, little consolidated knowledge exists on the basic communications network infrastructure of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the absence open access and public data, rumors and fear have reigned supreme. During provisional research on the censorship regime of the government, we found initial indicators that telecommunications entities in Iran have leveraged private address spaces to build a mature information network only reachable within the country. Despite the clear political implications of the claim we put forward, particularly in light of rampant speculation regarding the mandate of Article 46 of the Fifth Five Year Development Plan to establish a ``national information network,'' we hestitate to engage in speculation regarding the purpose of this structure. Rather, in order to solicit critical feedback for future research, we outline our initial findings and attempt to demonstrate that the matter under contention is a nation-wide phenomenom that warrants broader attention."

So essentially, my argument is that the widescale routing of 10/8 subnets across domestic networks, coupled with domains pointed to these addresses, warrants serious attention.

jfasi• 14 years ago

Is it just me, or wouldn't it be fairly trivial for a troublesome country to just point a satellite at Iran and give citizens access that way?

kapitalx2• 14 years ago

It is possible, however it is inconvenient and sometimes impossible for the majority to gain access this way. Also a large portion of the population uses internet cafes to access the internet, and they'd have to switch over the the national interanet.

gaius2• 14 years ago

It's pretty trivial to block a satellite.

collinanderson5• 14 years ago

Which is why they do, it's also very trivial to hunt down those privileged people with BGAN dishes deployed.

jim_kaiser2• 14 years ago

This is obviously not going to solve the problem of cyber attacks. As I remember, even the stuxnet attack on their nuclear reactor was ultimately caused by transmission through a pen drive into an isolated network. No reason, the same cannot be achieved even if they isolate the country's network. More entry points as I see it.

pooriaazimi• 14 years ago

They say it's meant to be a solution for cyber attacks, and to a tiny extent, it might be; but as everyone knows, the actual purpose is to cut off people from "information super-highway" completely (one step at a time).

As we all know, "Ignorance is Strength", and they'd like it better if we could only watch state TV and read stories from official news agencies. Would solve a lot of problems, or so do they think.

ImprovedSilence2• 14 years ago

You are assuming that pen drives are still in use on their isolated networks. It matters such as these, it is very possible that the pen drive tactic works once, before measures are taken to prevent it again.

evanlong• 14 years ago

So Iran is making their own "AOL"? perhaps they'll call it "IOL". Hopefully, they'll mail CDs to their citizens with FREE 1000 hours of internet time.

hughesey• 14 years ago

The Internet is Iran is already quite unique, thanks to the strict Government controlled filters in place.

There was a recent study testing the top 100 websites in each of Alexa's site categories. It tested if each was available in Iran using the Iran Firewall Test (http://viewdns.info/iranfirewall/).

The result? Approximately 27% of sites we tested were blocked. Categories such as adult sites saw much higher rates.

The research piece is here for anyone interested: http://viewdns.info/research/current-state-of-internet-censo...

Tichy• 14 years ago

Obviously it wouldn't be an internet, only an iranet.

gaius2• 14 years ago

They could use DECnet for it, now there was a proper protocol. And LAT for the "last mile".

sturadnidge• 14 years ago

> “When countries section off parts of the Web, not only do their citizens suffer, everyone does.”

No-one* in western democracies would ever consider doing such a thing.

*http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/27/twitter-facebook...

umrashrf• 14 years ago

I support Iranian internet regime. Currently it's very clear that internet is run by Americans and because we need more open and controlled internet for the world, I would ask every Muslim country to support it too for it to become the next Internet for the world.

jschuur• 14 years ago

Something like 60% of Iranians are under 30. This is Iran's way of limiting any easy communication and organization amongst a younger generation seeking change.

ImprovedSilence2• 14 years ago

>> "a plan to take key government agencies and military outfits offline and onto the new network by the end of September. "

If I'm not mistaken, the US govt has "offline" internets, as well as stripped down and monitored internets. Not for all the citizens of course, but naturally for the key govt agencies, no? Doesn't really seem like news to me.

Iran designing its own version of the Internet

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