To the Internet community:
We must empower Ukraine to operate and defend itself on the Internet, and stop arguing over dubious actions against Russia that don’t even affect the perpetrators of this war—the Russian ruling party.
In this blog, I will tell you why many of the ideas about limiting access to Internet infrastructure in Russia won’t work and won’t be effective.
1. Taking the Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) .RU down
In a letter, the Government Advisory Committee Ukraine representative at ICANN has asked ICANN to remove .RU (Russia’s ccTLD) from the root zone. This means that any of the second level domains in that space (example.ru) won’t be accessible. This is a bad idea:
-This does not help Ukraine’s Internet in any way. Russia is not undertaking the cyberattacks through .RU.
-Ordinary people and institutions that run their domain names in that space will lose access.
-Those who have the economic power (eg.. the government and the oligarchs) can register other second level domains while ordinary people with established businesses might have less access to alternatives.
-It sets a bad precedent that can affect future ICANN actions. If ICANN takes action, it should also take action when there are claims against other ccTLDs. The precedent, for example, can help attach ccTLD to those who claim it is an asset and have a writ of attachment against a ccTLD.
2. The Autonomous Systems: lets not respond to the Russians
When ISPs and Internet Exchange Points and other network operators want to talk to each other, they talk through Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs or ASes). ISPs on the RIPE mailing list were discussing whether they should respond to announcements coming from Russian ASes. Remember that these ASes connect people to the global Internet. So, if Network Operators don’t respond and connect—if these Russian ASes are “shunned”— the shunned ASes will be effectively cut off. Remember, the Internet doesn’t work like a telephone system: sometimes ASes get their connections through connecting to ASes in other countries. It is not all territorial. It is also not so clear-cut to understand which AS is run by the government and which is run by others. And governments, especially autocratic ones, try to have a hand in every private affair. Also, not all parts of the government are providing services in favor of war against Ukraine. Some provide critical services to the population, and they do interconnect with networks outside of Russia to provide those services.
Removing Russian ASes (that in itself is a debatable concept) from the routing table only makes it less efficient for these ASes to communicate. It is unlikely to create a disconnection. It only creates latency for ordinary people who connect through the ISPs.
Ripe NCC Executive Board announced that it will not take any action with this regard. Note that the community can take some collective action on its own. But RIPE NCC Executive Board as an institution announced will not take any action.
3. Root servers
The Ukrainian GAC member to ICANN requested removal of Russia-located root server instances. ICANN, which operates the “l” root server cluster, has a few root server instances in Russia. So do some other root server operators, and ICANN cannot control them. Even if ICANN shuts down the root servers, other actors root servers can effectively be used. Shutting down the root servers is in any case also not an effective way to disconnect, since Internet service providers in Russia can get access to the root zone in other ways and find other ways to connect. More importantly, in no way does removing root servers from Russia help Ukraine not to be attacked or to have better access to the Internet.
Effective sanctions and punishment can work and should be used to stop the perpetrators of this war. We should wake up from this Internet revenge fantasy that does not help anybody! Instead, let’s help Ukraine’s interconnection and access to the Internet. This is not the time to try and prove our “theoretical” ideas might have some merit!
