The Peering Forum 2017, organized by the company MSK-IX, included a quick round of questions on the localization of Runet traffic for famous Internet gurus – Mikhail Medrish (Akado Telecom), Andrey Vorobyev (Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ), Alexei Rogdev (Beeline) and Dmitry Burkov (RIPE NCC/FAITID). They fielded questions about what the Russian online segment is and what volume of Russian internal traffic goes through foreign networks, and also modeled a situation of a hypothetical ban on passing information from one Russian node to another via foreign channels, and the possible consequences.
Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Andrey Vorobyev noted that localization of traffic has been in the focus of attention of both government and business. A study conducted by the Association of Documentary Telecommunications showed that the overall volume of loop traffic flowing between two Russian nodes through foreign channels does not exceed 2.5 percent. However, the indicators vary depending on the type of traffic: “Internet traffic may be of two types – transport traffic and that of apps. The amounts of information passing through foreign networks will be different for these types. As we learned, 35 percent of all DNS-queries is transmitted by Russian operators to external channels and is processed by foreign servers of the Technical Center of Internet. Many Russian operators do not pay enough attention to DNS-peering with nodes operational for national domains .RU and .РФ.
At the end of the quiz, the Director of the Coordination Center commented that an increase in the number of routes delivering information from the sender to the addressee always improves the system’s security.
Currently, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ in association with the Higher School of Economics conducts statistical surveys of the Russian Internet development trends, which will apply different Technometrics tools. Preliminary results of the study will be presented on December 13 during the Runet 2017: Results of the Year event, whereas complete statistics will be available in early 2018.
