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From Bill Woodcock who first posted this email: "In the short-term, this is a bad plan because it would cut the Russian man-on-the-street off from internationa

by lwneal 5y ago

From Bill Woodcock who first posted this email: "In the short-term, this is a bad plan because it would cut the Russian man-on-the-street off from international news and perspectives, leaving them with only what the Russian government chooses to tell them. That's not a great way to decrease Russian public support for the war. In the long-term, this would set the precedent that small industry associations in Los Angeles and Amsterdam would be playing arbiter in international conflicts, and messing with countries' supposedly-sovereign country-code top-level domains. And if that were to happen, a lot more countries than just China and Russia would secede from the common-consensus-Internet that allows us to all talk to each other." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Woodcock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Woodcock [2] https://twitter.com/woodyatpch/status/1498472865301098500 https://twitter.com/woodyatpch/status/1498472865301098500

sissjdb 5y ago
This is ridiculous. International news don’t live under .ru, nor do many of the independent medias like MEDUZA. Bill might be a smart guy, but this is a big time brain fart from him. Everybody makes mistakes.
- inopinatus 5y ago
  Perhaps it’s because Bill has actually read the entire request, not just the summary headline, and extrapolated the multifaceted consequences, of which “can’t resolve foo.ru” is just the tip of an iceberg.
  - sissjdb 5y ago
    I too read the entire request, it’s unnecessarily rude of you to suggest otherwise. Shutting down root nameservers inside Russia would not impact Russian citizens ability to resolve domain names.
    - inopinatus 5y ago
      Yes, it will, and Bill makes it clear how and why.
      - rosndo 5y ago
        Anyone with basic understanding of DNS infrastructure knows that Bill is wrong. You do not need to query the root nameservers often, a slight increase in latency makes no difference whatsoever for queries which occur once every 10 minutes or so and can be performed in the background.
        inopinatus 5y ago
        > Anyone with basic understanding of DNS infrastructure Well, since I have actually developed, built, and operated global-scale authoritative (and resolver) DNS infrastructure, as well as ISP infrastructure more generally from the first dialups to multinational backbones, and internet exchanges, and witnessed (and handled) the many and fascinating failure modes (whether accidental or malicious) of both the DNS and Internet routing, by this standard I am prepared to make the ambit claim of being qualified to comment. From your remark I can tell that you have not actually bothered to read what Bill wrote, either. I suggest returning to https://twitter.com/woodyatpch/status/1498472865301098500 https://twitter.com/woodyatpch/status/1498472865301098500 and reviewing the substance. I agree with his remarks. You are not arguing against them, but against some fictional re-imagining of what they might've been.
        rosndo 5y ago
        > I agree with his remarks. You are not arguing against them, but against some fictional re-imagining of what they might've been. Please drop the unnecessary insults. I read what he wrote before my first reply, and this is specifically what I am objecting to: > 2) Shut down the root nameservers inside Russia. That would make connectivity spotty for many users inside Russia, but mostly regular folks, not government or military users. It is a downright lie, shutting down root nameservers inside Russia wouldn’t make connectivity inside Russia “spotty”. Slight increase in latency to foreign root nameservers would have no noticeable impact as you can always query them in the background. PS. Why do you need to be such an asshole about this? It’s completely unnecessary. You aren’t the only person in the world with networking experience, you aren’t special.
dymk 5y ago
China and Russia have already effectively seceded from the 'open internet'. Those governments have firewalls and killswitches set up in such a way that they can censor whatever they want. If they wish to reap the benefits of the open internet, it's only fair they face consequences when they abuse their power.
- farseer 5y ago
  Who gets to decide if someone abuses their power? For example the UN did not authorize the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
  - dymk 5y ago
    Do you think Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not a violation of Uk sovereignty? Is that not an abuse of their power?
    - pipodeclown 5y ago
      Are you just purposefully avoiding the question and intentionally misconstruing the op's intent? Again, what he's asking is who gets to decide what is a abuse of power and what is not? I think the example given by op is right on the money. You don't see the parallel with Irak? Fabricating some story and evidence of weapons of mass destruction and then occupying a country for a decade, sounds like something Putin would do and you might construe that as abuse of power as well. I didn't see anybody calling for the US to be deleted from the internet back then.
    - yucky 5y ago
      I think the argument is that the Ukrainian coup in 2014[1] which was financed and fomented by foreign actors (CIA up to their old tricks), means that the current government is not only illegitimate, but put in power by Russian adversaries specifically to threaten their security. This is why the US stood by when Russia rolled into Crimea, because we knew we were in the wrong and that was the price we had to pay (giving up Crimea to Russia) in order to keep "our guys" in control in Ukraine. It's also why the "Russian Collusion" thing was blown up in 2016. None of these events happened in a vacuum. Not passing judgement on which is side has the most legitimate grievance, just providing context that seems to be skipped over when this matter comes up. [1] https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/06/04/how-and-why-the-u-s-government-perpetrated-the-2014-coup-in-ukraine/ https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/06/04/how-and-why-the-u-s-go...
compsciphd 5y ago
how does removing .ru dns cut the russian man-on-the-street from interational news and perspectives. dns is not ip addresses. all that means is russian websites would stop working via normal dns, not that ip addresses would stop routing and non .ru would continue to resolve normally. the only thing I can imagine is that it would cut them off because russia et al would then take the step to cut them off (which they sort of do already)
- elithrar 5y ago
  > dns is not ip addresses. all that means is russian websites would stop working via normal dns, not that ip addresses would stop routing and non .ru would continue to resolve normally A “man on the street” isn’t browsing via IP address, and in the modern days of TLS SNI, you practically can’t just type in IP addresses to visit websites anyway. Names matter.
  - compsciphd 5y ago
    but removing .ru resolution doesn't prevent someone from resolving www.google.com
    - elithrar 5y ago
      Not all .ru sites are state-owned.
      - compsciphd 5y ago
        again, not what I was arguing against. the argument was removing .ru resolution would prevent russians from reading international media to see how the rest of the world is seeing it. I dont understand how one can make that argument with a straight face.
- kdtsh 5y ago
  Regardless of what you think about this possible course of action, this is totally disingenuous. It’s like saying that 40 years ago removing some businesses from the yellow pages didn’t mean you couldn’t still call them - that’s technically correct, but you’d better have them in your address book already or know someone who does. Compound that problem with 1) needing a much bigger address book, 2) phone numbers changing and the same business potentially having many phone numbers to different parts of their business, 3) never having used a phone book before and not even having an address book to start with (using an IP address is totally out of the ordinary for many people, and may not even be supported by applications other than a web browser. If suddenly all the sites I visited were no longer available through my usual DNS providers, I wouldn’t be able to visit them).

by lwneal 5y ago

sissjdb 5y ago

This is ridiculous. International news don’t live under .ru, nor do many of the independent medias like MEDUZA. Bill might be a smart guy, but this is a big time brain fart from him. Everybody makes mistakes.

inopinatus 5y ago
Perhaps it’s because Bill has actually read the entire request, not just the summary headline, and extrapolated the multifaceted consequences, of which “can’t resolve foo.ru” is just the tip of an iceberg.
- sissjdb 5y ago
  I too read the entire request, it’s unnecessarily rude of you to suggest otherwise. Shutting down root nameservers inside Russia would not impact Russian citizens ability to resolve domain names.
  - inopinatus 5y ago
    Yes, it will, and Bill makes it clear how and why.
    - rosndo 5y ago
      Anyone with basic understanding of DNS infrastructure knows that Bill is wrong. You do not need to query the root nameservers often, a slight increase in latency makes no difference whatsoever for queries which occur once every 10 minutes or so and can be performed in the background.
      - inopinatus 5y ago
        > Anyone with basic understanding of DNS infrastructure Well, since I have actually developed, built, and operated global-scale authoritative (and resolver) DNS infrastructure, as well as ISP infrastructure more generally from the first dialups to multinational backbones, and internet exchanges, and witnessed (and handled) the many and fascinating failure modes (whether accidental or malicious) of both the DNS and Internet routing, by this standard I am prepared to make the ambit claim of being qualified to comment. From your remark I can tell that you have not actually bothered to read what Bill wrote, either. I suggest returning to https://twitter.com/woodyatpch/status/1498472865301098500 https://twitter.com/woodyatpch/status/1498472865301098500 and reviewing the substance. I agree with his remarks. You are not arguing against them, but against some fictional re-imagining of what they might've been.
        rosndo 5y ago
        > I agree with his remarks. You are not arguing against them, but against some fictional re-imagining of what they might've been. Please drop the unnecessary insults. I read what he wrote before my first reply, and this is specifically what I am objecting to: > 2) Shut down the root nameservers inside Russia. That would make connectivity spotty for many users inside Russia, but mostly regular folks, not government or military users. It is a downright lie, shutting down root nameservers inside Russia wouldn’t make connectivity inside Russia “spotty”. Slight increase in latency to foreign root nameservers would have no noticeable impact as you can always query them in the background. PS. Why do you need to be such an asshole about this? It’s completely unnecessary. You aren’t the only person in the world with networking experience, you aren’t special.

dymk 5y ago

China and Russia have already effectively seceded from the 'open internet'. Those governments have firewalls and killswitches set up in such a way that they can censor whatever they want. If they wish to reap the benefits of the open internet, it's only fair they face consequences when they abuse their power.

farseer 5y ago
Who gets to decide if someone abuses their power? For example the UN did not authorize the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
- dymk 5y ago
  Do you think Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not a violation of Uk sovereignty? Is that not an abuse of their power?
  - pipodeclown 5y ago
    Are you just purposefully avoiding the question and intentionally misconstruing the op's intent? Again, what he's asking is who gets to decide what is a abuse of power and what is not? I think the example given by op is right on the money. You don't see the parallel with Irak? Fabricating some story and evidence of weapons of mass destruction and then occupying a country for a decade, sounds like something Putin would do and you might construe that as abuse of power as well. I didn't see anybody calling for the US to be deleted from the internet back then.
  - yucky 5y ago
    I think the argument is that the Ukrainian coup in 2014[1] which was financed and fomented by foreign actors (CIA up to their old tricks), means that the current government is not only illegitimate, but put in power by Russian adversaries specifically to threaten their security. This is why the US stood by when Russia rolled into Crimea, because we knew we were in the wrong and that was the price we had to pay (giving up Crimea to Russia) in order to keep "our guys" in control in Ukraine. It's also why the "Russian Collusion" thing was blown up in 2016. None of these events happened in a vacuum. Not passing judgement on which is side has the most legitimate grievance, just providing context that seems to be skipped over when this matter comes up. [1] https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/06/04/how-and-why-the-u-s-government-perpetrated-the-2014-coup-in-ukraine/ https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/06/04/how-and-why-the-u-s-go...

compsciphd 5y ago

how does removing .ru dns cut the russian man-on-the-street from interational news and perspectives. dns is not ip addresses. all that means is russian websites would stop working via normal dns, not that ip addresses would stop routing and non .ru would continue to resolve normally. the only thing I can imagine is that it would cut them off because russia et al would then take the step to cut them off (which they sort of do already)

elithrar 5y ago
> dns is not ip addresses. all that means is russian websites would stop working via normal dns, not that ip addresses would stop routing and non .ru would continue to resolve normally A “man on the street” isn’t browsing via IP address, and in the modern days of TLS SNI, you practically can’t just type in IP addresses to visit websites anyway. Names matter.
- compsciphd 5y ago
  but removing .ru resolution doesn't prevent someone from resolving www.google.com
  - elithrar 5y ago
    Not all .ru sites are state-owned.
    - compsciphd 5y ago
      again, not what I was arguing against. the argument was removing .ru resolution would prevent russians from reading international media to see how the rest of the world is seeing it. I dont understand how one can make that argument with a straight face.
kdtsh 5y ago
Regardless of what you think about this possible course of action, this is totally disingenuous. It’s like saying that 40 years ago removing some businesses from the yellow pages didn’t mean you couldn’t still call them - that’s technically correct, but you’d better have them in your address book already or know someone who does. Compound that problem with 1) needing a much bigger address book, 2) phone numbers changing and the same business potentially having many phone numbers to different parts of their business, 3) never having used a phone book before and not even having an address book to start with (using an IP address is totally out of the ordinary for many people, and may not even be supported by applications other than a web browser. If suddenly all the sites I visited were no longer available through my usual DNS providers, I wouldn’t be able to visit them).