Iran Rolls Out National Internet by May

[longbrained]

Iran to Start First Phase of Domestic Internet by May

Iran to Start First Phase of Domestic Internet by May, Fars Says - Businessweek

Iran will introduce the first phase of its domestic Internet network by May 21, the state-run Fars news agency reported, citing Iranian Minister of Communication and Information Technology Reza Taghipour.

Taghipour said the launch of the network was a priority of his ministry in the new Iranian year that started on March 20. A local data center, search engine and domestic e-mail service are being completed, Fars cited him as saying, without elaborating on the projects.

Iranian officials had earlier announced plans to set up a national Internet search engine by 2012, which they said will be more suited to the needs of Iranians as it will produce a smaller list of results than others such as Yahoo and Google.

 

[Harry_Thomason]

Good move, I assume Iran will use local DNS servers as well?

 

[longbrained]

Good move, I assume Iran will use local DNS servers as well?

Let's see when it comes out. Even if they manage initially to provide services like mail, search, video sharing and social networking it would be good. Though the best would be to have a complete structure within Iran including top level DNS servers so that even if internet connection to outside world is compromised, Iran's own internet plus the nations connected to it survives. Even better would be if Iran had its own operating system as well instead of relying on windows. An open source operating system like a Linux based system would have even been more secured.

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Wonderful hopefully a better search engine with no "spam" from US and UK companies biggest spammers in world and spam from Nigeria all blocked wonderful achivement

 

[PERSIAN GOD KING]

That is good news indeed.

 

[Hack-Hook]

Wonderful hopefully a better search engine with no "spam" from US and UK companies biggest spammers in world and spam from Nigeria all blocked wonderful achivement

I agree about spams from Nigeria .
by the way If they manage to provide a DNS server and a reliable data center I'll call it a great achievement even if it fail in all other aspects of the project at this phase .

 

[Serpentine]

I hope they don't cut off ineternational internet,then we should say goodbye to PDF and lots of foreign sites.
But there is one benefit in this project,there is no need to send all important data like banking transactions to servers outside country,which they could be hacked and accessed easily.It's like a huge Intranet that connects all PCs inside Iran and will dramatically increase bandwidth for domestic websites.

 

[PERSIAN GOD KING]

Is Iran the country which such a thing?

 

[longbrained]

I hope they don't cut off ineternational internet,then we should say goodbye to PDF and lots of foreign sites.
But there is one benefit in this project,there is no need to send all important data like banking transactions to servers outside country,which they could be hacked and accessed easily.It's like a huge Intranet that connects all PCs inside Iran and will dramatically increase bandwidth for domestic websites.

I do not think they are going to cut the internet. But as they have said this is going to be a backup for the day internet fails and also to have all the Iranian data within Iran's borders rather than on servers in Europe and America.

Is Iran the country which such a thing?

I guess Turkey had done such a similar thing as well, though I do not know if it was successful. They had even promised to give a national email address to every Turk with 10 GB guaranteed space and the email would be written in every Turkish National ID card so that the Turks can write emails in a secured network rather than using Google or Yahoo which can see all the Turkish emails and what they are doing. But I do not know if they ever completed the project.

 

[Shivani Malhotra]

Let's see when it comes out. Even if they manage initially to provide services like mail, search, video sharing and social networking it would be good. Though the best would be to have a complete structure within Iran including top level DNS servers so that even if internet connection to outside world is compromised, Iran's own internet plus the nations connected to it survives. Even better would be if Iran had its own operating system as well instead of relying on windows. An open source operating system like a Linux based system would have even been more secured.

How will they be able to communicate with the other world if they will use their own DNS servers ? How will they route the traffic if we are talking about internet.What will happen to the business portals which are already running ? How come some one from other country will be able to do business with them if they wont be able to reach their domain or internet as No other ISP's gonna have their host or site records on their own DNS servers ?

 

[somebozo]

How will they be able to communicate with the other world if they will use their own DNS servers ? How will they route the traffic if we are talking about internet.What will happen to the business portals which are already running ? How come some one from other country will be able to do business with them if they wont be able to reach their domain or internet as No other ISP's gonna have their host or site records on their own DNS servers ?

Internet is a collection of Intranets assigned with Public route-able Address. The interconnection is handled by several hundred routers connected to Internet. What has been lost in translation is that Iran rolls out national broadband network. A while back Iran reduced the DSL connection speed of every subscriber to 128K meanwhile a contract was awarded to Huwawei for making massive backbone upgrade and routing capabilities. Iran has no international routing hubs which make it depends on its upstream providers to make the interconnections. At peak hours that could become a choke point as well being under sanctions the threat of take out of internet looms overhead all the time. With an efficient local intranet and routing hubs, Iran will be independent to connect with any upstream link even those by satellite.

One of the prime benefit this network will bring to Iran is exhorbant amount of local bandwidth available free of cost. Previously all data exchange would be required to reach the upstream routing hub which caused upstream charges to be levied also on local data exchange.

We had this problem in Saudi Arabia until 2008, when you could be sending a file to your friend over MSN located in the next building but the actual data exchange would require travel to upstream routing hub located in Bahrain, Dubai or Italy!

 

[longbrained]

How will they be able to communicate with the other world if they will use their own DNS servers ? How will they route the traffic if we are talking about internet.What will happen to the business portals which are already running ? How come some one from other country will be able to do business with them if they wont be able to reach their domain or internet as No other ISP's gonna have their host or site records on their own DNS servers ?

It is not like they are cutting off from the internet and writing their own routing protocols. They are just moving the data centers and DNS serves inside the country. In normal days, things are going to be as usual. But if some day Iran is under cyberwar attack or its international internet connection is severed for example by sabotaging the submarine cables then, Iran's own internet will survive. You will not be able to reach outside but inside it is business as usual. They are doing this for two purpose. One is to make sure foreigners do not have access to what Iranians are writing in their e-mails, tweet, messages and such as today Yahoo or Google can see each and every Iranian mail. The other reason is for doomsday when US might attack them and cut off their internet as US is capable of doing since US president hold the kill button over the top DNS servers which are housed in US. They can even cut off India if they want. It is not only Iran which is vulnerable.

 

[Serpentine]

How will they be able to communicate with the other world if they will use their own DNS servers ? How will they route the traffic if we are talking about internet.What will happen to the business portals which are already running ? How come some one from other country will be able to do business with them if they wont be able to reach their domain or internet as No other ISP's gonna have their host or site records on their own DNS servers ?

It's not like what you are thinking.As i said before,it's like a big Intranet network that connects all the PCs inside Iran.Now this network is connected to international internet so every one can have access to Internet too.The benefit of domestic DNS servers is that Iranian websites do not need to buy expensive servers outside country and there is no need to send data to foreign servers,this leads to a highly secured data trafficking which is almost immune to spams, Trojans and hackers. So Iran would be much more secured in a potential cyber war.There are still some risks of hacking in to systems,but it is reduced dramatically.

 

[Harry_Thomason]

Let's see when it comes out. Even if they manage initially to provide services like mail, search, video sharing and social networking it would be good. Though the best would be to have a complete structure within Iran including top level DNS servers so that even if internet connection to outside world is compromised, Iran's own internet plus the nations connected to it survives. Even better would be if Iran had its own operating system as well instead of relying on windows. An open source operating system like a Linux based system would have even been more secured.

I agree, it most likely will be gradual process, but total independence and fully secure local data exchange between banks, any government department, etc. will be extremely valuable.

Iran OS project is underway: PressTV - 'Iran to unveil national OS soon'

Military already using OS: PressTV - Iran develops national operating system

 

[longbrained]

I agree, it most likely will be gradual process, but total independence and fully secure local data exchange between banks, any government department, etc. will be extremely valuable.

Iran OS project is underway: PressTV - 'Iran to unveil national OS soon'

Military already using OS: PressTV - Iran develops national operating system

That is a wonderful news. It is also based on open source Linux which has an excellent record on security. That is the way to go for the world too. Windows is too insecure to be of use anymore.