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The title here slants the discussion somewhat. Reporters without borders presented it this way in their 2012 report; "Several times in 2011, Iranian President

by harryf 15y ago

The title here slants the discussion somewhat. Reporters without borders presented it this way in their 2012 report; "Several times in 2011, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, true to his nationalist policies, announced the creation of a national Web, a "clean" version of the Internet with its own search engine and messaging service. This may mean two different types of access, one for the authorities and another for the rest of the population" To me that implies stricter use of firewalls and launching national services for search and email. That's somewhat different to re-inventing the Internet, which I feel the title here implies.

pooriaazimi 15y ago
(I live in Iran an know quite a lot about this "national" Internet thing. Also check out this other submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432816 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432816) I haven't read this article yet, but believe me, they want to shut down Internet badly. They've been planning (and building the infrastructure and testing it) for the past three years. But you're quite right, they can't shut down the Internet completely, it will be there. But, the "national" Internet will be faster, and all official websites (news agencies, banks, etc.) will be forced to support it. I'm sure you won't believe it, but right now there's a cap for Internet access speed in Iran (128 Kbps: 128 Kilobits per second, or 16 KiloBytes per second). If you're a student or you can make a reasonable argument, you can go as high as 1 MBps (and an unmetered 1Mbps access costs about 130 dollars per month, so for most people it doesn't worth it). Now, imagine a cheap, 7 Mbps "national" Internet for everyone. The Internet can't compete with this new intranet... [Edit] fix typo
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  "128 KiloBytes" per second is a 1Mbit connection... That's more than enough for most people unless you're a heavy video user. I think mine is about 8Mbit, but I doubt I'd notice if it dropped to 1Mbit. I'm not arguing for the cap. I'm just confused that you think a 1Mbit connection is somehow comically slow?
  - pooriaazimi 15y ago
    Sorry. I don't know how I made that mistake... I meant 128 Kilobits per second (16 KiloBytes per second). The best you can get is 1 Megabits per second (128 KiloBytes per second). I have a 256 Kbps connection. It's really, really slow. It took me 2 days to download OS X Lion from Mac App Store (about 3.5 GB).

by harryf 15y ago

pooriaazimi 15y ago

(I live in Iran an know quite a lot about this "national" Internet thing. Also check out this other submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432816 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432816) I haven't read this article yet, but believe me, they want to shut down Internet badly. They've been planning (and building the infrastructure and testing it) for the past three years. But you're quite right, they can't shut down the Internet completely, it will be there. But, the "national" Internet will be faster, and all official websites (news agencies, banks, etc.) will be forced to support it. I'm sure you won't believe it, but right now there's a cap for Internet access speed in Iran (128 Kbps: 128 Kilobits per second, or 16 KiloBytes per second). If you're a student or you can make a reasonable argument, you can go as high as 1 MBps (and an unmetered 1Mbps access costs about 130 dollars per month, so for most people it doesn't worth it). Now, imagine a cheap, 7 Mbps "national" Internet for everyone. The Internet can't compete with this new intranet... [Edit] fix typo

mike-cardwell 15y ago
"128 KiloBytes" per second is a 1Mbit connection... That's more than enough for most people unless you're a heavy video user. I think mine is about 8Mbit, but I doubt I'd notice if it dropped to 1Mbit. I'm not arguing for the cap. I'm just confused that you think a 1Mbit connection is somehow comically slow?
- pooriaazimi 15y ago
  Sorry. I don't know how I made that mistake... I meant 128 Kilobits per second (16 KiloBytes per second). The best you can get is 1 Megabits per second (128 KiloBytes per second). I have a 256 Kbps connection. It's really, really slow. It took me 2 days to download OS X Lion from Mac App Store (about 3.5 GB).