The 18th RIF+CIB 2014 Russian Internet Forum opened at the Polyany Retreat Center in a suburb of Moscow on April 23. For three days, leading experts from Russian and foreign companies will discuss the main Internet trends and their impact on the worldwide web and Internet economy.
RAEC Director Sergei Plugotarenko opened a plenary meeting with an analytical report, RUnet Today: Figures, Facts and Trends. He focused on the Russian and global domain space, telling the RIF participants that 2014 marks the 20th anniversary of the RU domain and is also the starting year for hundreds of new gTLDs. According to Plugotarenko, new domains will significantly impact the growth of the domain industry and the entire Internet economy.
Andrei Kolesnikov, CEO of Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ, spoke about trends in Russian national domains. “There are nearly 6 million registered domain names in the Russian domains RU and РФ. However, the number of newly registered domain names has been declining recently in the wake of a general downtrend in the activities of Russian small and medium-sized businesses. However, my forecast is not pessimistic at all, since quantitative growth is now being replaced by qualitative growth, and fundamentally new Internet services and platforms are becoming available. We are seeing this trend unfold before our eyes: the number of unique visitors is growing exponentially, meaning user activity is up sharply,” he said.
Andrei Kolesnikov believes that the main areas of Internet development in the near future include rapid growth of the Internet of Things and the development of cyber security technology. “The world is becoming more complex,” he said. “Cybercriminals use the most sophisticated methods. Everyone should fight cybercrime in their respective professional areas. For example, the Coordinating Center, together with its partners, including Group-IB, Kaspersky Lab, Mail.ru, Rostelecom, RU-CERT, Internet Technical Center and Yandex have built the unique netoscope.ru project, which is used to isolate the most malicious resources in the national domains RU and РФ.”
A talk show about the past, present and future of the Russian Internet – RUnet 20+20: History. Trends – started immediately after the plenary session. According to the organizers, the talk show was supposed to center on the history of RUnet, but its participants spoke more about its future.
“Above all, the Internet is a family of protocols,” Kolesnikov said, commenting on the Internet's restrictions. “It was built to withstand a nuclear attack, figuratively speaking. I don’t believe that civic or government institutions can cause substantial damage to the Internet, no matter how tough the regulations may be. Innovative technology is always a challenge to legislators and regulators. The technology will always be far ahead of them, so we are looking at all these developments with cautious optimism.”
New ICANN Vice President for Russia, the CIS and Eastern Europe and a CCCouncil member Mikhail Yakushev supported Kolesnikov, adding that the Internet will survive any and all attempts at unreasonable regulation. Yakushev said that the Internet is very flexible and always allows users to work around any particular ban. He also pointed out that such regulations should be measured, or users may leave for the Darknet where there are no rules or regulations.
