
Iran designing its own version of the Internet - kevinburke
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iran-preparing-internal-version-of-internet/2012/09/19/79458194-01c3-11e2-b260-32f4a8db9b7e_story.html
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joelrunyon
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_

~~~
kapitalx
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.

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hughesey
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...](http://viewdns.info/research/current-state-of-internet-censorship-
in-iran/)

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sturadnidge
> “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...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/27/twitter-facebook-riot-restrictions-eric-schmidt)

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jim_kaiser
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
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.

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mindstab
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.

~~~
dfc
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.

~~~
moo
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.

~~~
__alexs
I'm not saying that we don't have a fascist government willing to censor
anything they don't like the look of but the Press TV thing might not be the
best example.

They had their license revoked after broadcasting a "confession" by Canadian
journalist Maziar Bahari that was conducted after torturing him and under
threat of execution.

Then they apparently admitted to being editorially controlled by their Iranian
branch, who are not licensed to broadcast in the UK.

[http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enforcement/broadcast-
licen...](http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enforcement/broadcast-licence-
conditions/press-tv-revoked)

If they were any good at the international diplomacy soft power game they'd
have just made sure only pro-Iranian people got hired to work at Press TV.
Kind of like RT and Al Jazeera.

~~~
moo
I've read nothing about there having been torture. Bahari claims the interview
with Press TV was under duress. The journalist was held a total of 4 months.
Bahari claims he had to condemn the west to gain release. The 10 second clip
Ofcom uses to incriminate is: “On Monday, 15 June [2009], I sent a report
about the attack against the base, a military base of Basij to Channel 4 News
as well as to Newsweek Magazine.”

Nothing there is a condemnation of the West.
<http://www.presstv.ir/detail/181727.html> According to Wikileaks the West has
been trying to remove Press TV's broadcast.

~~~
__alexs
He claims to have been beaten by his guards in numerous ways while in prison.
[http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/maziar%2Bbahari%2Ba...](http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/maziar%2Bbahari%2Ban%2Bordeal%2Bof%2Bterror%2Band%2Babsurdity/3488307.html)

"Of course there was some physical torture. He beat me, hit me with a belt,
punched and kicked me but to me the scarier parts were these conversations
because I could see he had a very wrong view of the world.

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dmix
The modern Berlin wall.

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angersock
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.

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

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

~~~
soneill
Ha, I should've guessed. I knew Cuba had a network like that, wasn't aware of
North Korea's.

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jon6
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).

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

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jfasi
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?

~~~
gaius
It's pretty trivial to block a satellite.

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

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ImprovedSilence
>> "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.

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umrashrf
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.

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

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jschuur
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.

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zingahgud
Oh man, that headline made me laugh.

~~~
rdl
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.

~~~
zingahgud
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.

~~~
borplk
I know a fair bit about this.

It's only there to restrict people's access to uncensored information.
Cyberattack etc is just an excuse to make people think it's something for
their own good.

Since they can tightly control it and it is a national network, they will
offer very fast speeds with attractive prices, the actual internet is terribly
expensive and incredibly slow, then they'll slowly expand from there, similar
to china, they will make their own versions of Twitter and Facebook and Gmail
and offer those at very cheap prices with great speed.

Banks and all government organisations are soon going to require people to use
a 'national email'. If your emails is @gmail.com they'll simply refuse it and
will ask you to open an account on this new email site.

Once it gains some momentum it'll snowball from there. Those who only want to
send an email and send a couple of messages to their friends will prefer the
national network because it is much cheaper and a lot faster.

Having said that, the whole thing is destined to fail. People will find ways
to fight it. At this point there's not enough information about the network
architecture but most probably there will be a large pool of computers with
high speed and unrestricted access to the internet as part of this network.

They will be the gateways to the internet. For example an Iranian bank will
transfer its 'netbank' to the national network. But the server that is hosting
this netbank still needs the internet to operate so that server will be
connected to the internet with a high quality link.

There's a possibility that people will manage to gain access to these nodes
and use it as a proxy to get high speed internet. Obviously if someone manages
to do that they'll probably try to stick to it as long as they can so it wont
bring the internet to everybody.

The network is being laid out from next week all across the country. We'll
see.

~~~
collinanderson
> Banks and all government organisations are soon going to require people to
> use a 'national email'. If your emails is @gmail.com they'll simply refuse
> it and will ask you to open an account on this new email site.

True, that was a policy statement from Taghipour, however my impression is
that the resistance from the banking industry and Majles led to the mandate
being scrapped. However, the overall point that Iran has a civil society
around the Internet is valid and the reason I am pushing out the paper
quickly.

Here is a link on banking:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=itna.ir%2Fvdccp4qi.2bqie8laa2.html&act=url)

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evanlong
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.

