The Internet is usually defined as a global set of interconnected computer nodes that can communicate with each other. There are many computer networks, but only one Internet. Generally, a node is part of the Internet if it can reach arbitrary machines that are on the Internet. If nodes A and B are on the Internet, they must be able to see each other with no further steps (these steps are implied by establishing connection to the global network). Hence, if some network is small compared to the global network and cannot communicate with a significant part of nodes outside itself, then it is not a true part of the global network.
Imagine an ISP showing you a dummy page when you didn’t pay your bill - its server could be located in another city, and the page could be delivered via standard protocols. If you had no intention of visiting anything beyond that page, you wouldn’t notice any difference between a restricted and non-restricted network, but there obviously is one. So the true distinction between a connected and disconnected state lies in potential reachability and the technical actions taken to create borders.
Russia’s communication networks have been transitioned into a local-by-default and centralized state, which contradicts the term Internet both technically and philosophically. This is proactive and happens in both directions and on multiple OSI layers. Built-in recovery mechanisms of the protocols are also being undermined. Aside from geographic concerns, the network now has MITM-by-design, with core principles of the Internet, such as its permissionless nature, tolerance towards encryption, and the ability to innovate at the protocol or service level, being oppressed.
Here is a short list of what’s blocked or critically throttled:
- Services: all popular foreign social networks, messengers, UGC platforms, various email services
- Content delivery: Cloudflare, Fastly, CloudFront and other foreign CDN/proxies
- Application: DNS, DOH resolvers, HTTP3, proxies, SSH, VPN (even local), TLS 1.3, ECH
- Network: subnets of foreign hosters (personally tested OVH, Hetzner, Linode, AWS, DO) and residential IPs, entire IPv6 are unreachable from Russia. Russian subnets are unavailable abroad
State-controlled traffic management utilities are powerful and non-transparent - they’re essentially black boxes. They could also conduct surveillance, creating non-technical obstacles to accessing the global internet. Whitelist rules are being applied even for in-country communication. One might say they can circumvent restrictions, but there is no evidence this can scale.
The current implementation of restrictions forces full separation of Russian and global resources, even from the user perspective. For example, there is no stable way to make a site on the same domain work inside and outside Russia. Certainly you could rent servers in two regions, but this won’t help, as the regulator randomly slows down connections to a few bytes per second instead of dropping them, preventing DNS-based round-robin. Similarly, you need to have two domains for reliable email communication, as local hosting and email providers occasionally drop mail to sent to foreign hosters. DNS resolution itself is also problematic because all requests are redirected to the National DNS system, which has some bias against second-level nameservers located outside Russia. Interoperability is broken - Runet diverged from the World Wide Web to the level they stop sharing identifiers.
I expect this trend to continue.
Message to my friends in Russia: this site will stay behind Cloudflare for now, please save my contact details. If the situation gets worse, I’ll try to show up at ru.yrz.am.