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I wish this article went into more details on what the "National Information Network" is. I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers th

I wish this article went into more details on what the "National Information Network" is. I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off. Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are. It's simply not going to be possible to meaningfully use the Internet unauthenticated and unapproved in a few years. Costs to reach mass audiences online will increase until only the big players can do it, and it'll be their platforms or nothing. There's going to be no room for anything that those with millions and billions of dollars don't want or can't make money off of in some way. Overall, this makes me want to reduce the role of the Internet and tech in my life. I don't need the fastest data plan, latest PC, newest phone, or whatever AI trend is hot to use the apps I need for daily life or to line up events and meetings with others that I actually know.

alephnerd 1y ago
> more details on what the "National Information Network" is Some sources [0][1] > I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off. Yep. Along with an entire ecosystem of domestically created and regulated search engines, DPI, centrally managed certs, AV, networking backbone, etc. It's similar in intention to the Great Firewall in China, except much more restrictive. Imagine corporate IT restrictions and posture being deployed nationwide on all endpoints, that's how these kind of initiatives tend to architected. SSE/Zero Trust, DPI, Cert Mgmt, etc are all dual-use, and it's essentially a logistics and organization problem. [0] - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1107324.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1107324.pdf [1] - https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38316/The-National-Internet-AR-KA-final.pdf https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38316/The-...
hexomancer 1y ago
I wrote a blog post which hopefully clears up the "National Network": https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-internet-2025.html https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-interne... It is way more than just DNS.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  Is Google's AI Mode working? That might solve the problem you mentioned.
  - hexomancer 1y ago
    Well, the internet is not national anymore (for now!), but isn't Google AI Mode US only? Anyway, the only google service that did work at that time was google search as far as I know nothing else worked (no gmail, maps, etc.).
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      Ah - I didn't realize Google AI Mode is US Only! > the only google service that did work at that time was google search as far as I know nothing else worked (no gmail, maps, etc.) Yea, sounds like they resorted to a hard whitelist. How were other Internet services impacted in Iran? My understanding is payment is increasingly tap-to-pay or via digital wallets within Iran? How was that impacted during the shutdown?
      - hexomancer 1y ago
        Well, Iran is sanctioned as fuck, so no global payment system works in Iran anyway. All the payment systems used by Iranians are local so they work even in national internet.
        alephnerd 1y ago
        Yep! What I meant was during the recent conflict, was the domestic payment system working? How brittle or robust was it during that, especially given that my understanding is that Iran has transitioned to a cashless society?
        hexomancer 1y ago
        Yes, it was working at least in my experience.
joecool1029 1y ago
> Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are. This is defeatist. You're probably right 'for the masses' but there will always be those networking and collaborating and bypassing whatever restrictions get put in place. I have online contacts in 'firewalled' regimes that use v2ray/shadowsocks or whatever the thing of the now is to get around the restrictions. There's a ton of cheap tools now that can be used for running local or citywide networks, hams have their own packet radio stuff. There's now all those new LoRa networks that only really popped up in the past few years. What I'm trying to say is the stuff is there and it's accessible, but it's only going to be a minority of people that use it just as it's a small minority that comments on posts like this (people like us) and even smaller yet again that write content on how to do it and create those tools to begin with. But it has always been this way....
- ZoomZoomZoom 1y ago
  > What I'm trying to say is the stuff is there and it's accessible, but it's only going to be a minority of people that use it Exactly. This is why the tech has to be made resistant to surveillance and censorship by default. Until usage of alternative connectivity and circumvention methods sticks out as a sore thumb (turns out, for most tools it does), it applies a constant pressure on anyone under oppression to stop, increasing the risks for those who continue to use them.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > hams have their own packet radio stuff We got basically three different things. First we got APRS, mostly used for position reports (go on aprs.fi for a map). That is pretty nice but unusable for anything more than a SMS worth of things, and you need repeaters and not just internet gateway collectors to actually have something that's resilient. Next thing is AX25, the technical foundation behind APRS. Yes you can use it to create actual data links, but it's about modem speeds so virtually useless outside of toying around. And finally there is HamNet but it's line of sight based and not cross routed to the internet, and identically to all things ham radio, encryption is banned by law. And on top of that, you can expect regulatory agencies to crack down on ham radio fast and hard, should it be used for political dissency motives at scale. It's already against ham practice to talk politics, especially with people in repressive countries - we don't want more countries other than Yemen and North Korea to just blanket ban ham radio.
one-note 1y ago
The only way to have global uncensored sharing of information is shortwave radio. Always has been, always will be.
- LocalH 1y ago
  Triangulation exists to locate such stations
  - one-note 1y ago
    Did I say untraceable? You’ll be found on the internet too btw. But far more easily.
- znano 1y ago
  Yeah, also a good source of getting information from the world in full internet shutdowns.
- voidUpdate 1y ago
  Couldn't someone just jam an active shortwave band?
  - one-note 1y ago
    Sure. You play cat and mouse with SNR. Not trivial, but easier than the same with cut cables.
mensetmanusman 1y ago
Maybe, or Starlink and software destabilize the authoritarians.
- znano 1y ago
  Yes, they will, im saying it with such certainty because of how much they're scared of it. It shows when they criminalize it and call it "spyware". But no matter what they do there will be light at the end. it cannot always be night.
immibis 1y ago
The current global Internet is an anomaly in space and time, and it's held together by spit, prayers, and the hope the reliability gains from multiple redundant paths outweigh the reliability losses from so many distinct actors being involved. It would be quite easy for any major government to cause major problems in global connectivity. So far, they mostly seem content to only cut themselves off, and the ones with the power to mess up the global net don't seem to want to. But the NSA was diverting a whole lot of intra-Europe traffic via the USA at one time so they could snoop it.
Aurornis 1y ago
> Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are. I feel like I’ve been hearing this for decades. During the initial wave of Napster-era piracy debates a lot of people assumed the end of the free internet was near because corporations wouldn’t allow it. > It's simply not going to be possible to meaningfully use the Internet unauthenticated and unapproved in a few years. I will take the opposite of that bet any day. Certain countries like Iran will impose their restrictions, but if you think the average country is going to restrict internet access in only a couple of years I don’t know what to say.
ogurechny 1y ago
Even 20 years ago the so-called “geeks” were reacting to those news with “We can fix that!”, and indeed were making the tools. They were often primitive, but modern ones are based on those developments and collected knowledge. Today's crowd is full of lickspittles who are constantly searching for someone or something to kneel before. Money, power, or at least flavour-of-the-month fame. A lot of work was put into spreading those ideals, and not teaching anything “outdated”, “dissenting” or “controversial”. So you're not just waving the white flag even before anyone intimidates you personally, you're actively working for that cause, willingly or unwillingly. Something tells me that you were not using 56 bit encryption when posting. In a different world, you would, and lament how pathetic and insecure it is to let someone calling themselves “government” have access to everything, but how understandable it is in presence of communists, terrorists, degenerates who have rejected the democratic values and thus stopped being humans, etc. Dystopias and the dystopian outlook actually helps any kind of high profile swindler a lot. People treat them as the portrayal of “how the world really works”, and expect it to be normal when someone does it, or just hints at such option to scare the public, while they were intended to portray how stupid people can be if they cease to think. Please choose some higher standards.
basilgohar 1y ago
This is just pendulum swinging between centralized and distributed. This is true for "online services", the Internet, computing (mainframes, PCs,cloud, mobile, etc.). If it swings one way, it'll swing back eventually. Just look for the innovations that make one option viable compared to others.
znano 1y ago
I have to do more research on NIN, it's hard to know what they're exactly doing.
Spooky23 1y ago
Probably a good thing. End of the day, what happened to Slashdot 20 years ago happened to society - an endless stream of trolls and jerks ruined everything.
walrus01 1y ago
> I wish this article went into more details on what the "National Information Network" is. It's AS12880, the state owned telecom company which all ISPs are obligated to be downstream of. It operates Iran's international links to other global scale ISPs via Turkey and other paths. https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/12880 https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/12880 https://bgp.he.net/AS12880 https://bgp.he.net/AS12880 And its also government run counterpart, the "TIC" https://bgp.he.net/AS49666#_asinfo https://bgp.he.net/AS49666#_asinfo https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=AS12880+iran https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=AS12880+i...

alephnerd 1y ago

> more details on what the "National Information Network" is Some sources [0][1] > I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off. Yep. Along with an entire ecosystem of domestically created and regulated search engines, DPI, centrally managed certs, AV, networking backbone, etc. It's similar in intention to the Great Firewall in China, except much more restrictive. Imagine corporate IT restrictions and posture being deployed nationwide on all endpoints, that's how these kind of initiatives tend to architected. SSE/Zero Trust, DPI, Cert Mgmt, etc are all dual-use, and it's essentially a logistics and organization problem. [0] - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1107324.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1107324.pdf [1] - https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38316/The-National-Internet-AR-KA-final.pdf https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38316/The-...

hexomancer 1y ago

I wrote a blog post which hopefully clears up the "National Network": https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-internet-2025.html https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-interne... It is way more than just DNS.

alephnerd 1y ago
Is Google's AI Mode working? That might solve the problem you mentioned.
- hexomancer 1y ago
  Well, the internet is not national anymore (for now!), but isn't Google AI Mode US only? Anyway, the only google service that did work at that time was google search as far as I know nothing else worked (no gmail, maps, etc.).
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    Ah - I didn't realize Google AI Mode is US Only! > the only google service that did work at that time was google search as far as I know nothing else worked (no gmail, maps, etc.) Yea, sounds like they resorted to a hard whitelist. How were other Internet services impacted in Iran? My understanding is payment is increasingly tap-to-pay or via digital wallets within Iran? How was that impacted during the shutdown?
    - hexomancer 1y ago
      Well, Iran is sanctioned as fuck, so no global payment system works in Iran anyway. All the payment systems used by Iranians are local so they work even in national internet.
      - alephnerd 1y ago
        Yep! What I meant was during the recent conflict, was the domestic payment system working? How brittle or robust was it during that, especially given that my understanding is that Iran has transitioned to a cashless society?
        hexomancer 1y ago
        Yes, it was working at least in my experience.

joecool1029 1y ago

> Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are. This is defeatist. You're probably right 'for the masses' but there will always be those networking and collaborating and bypassing whatever restrictions get put in place. I have online contacts in 'firewalled' regimes that use v2ray/shadowsocks or whatever the thing of the now is to get around the restrictions. There's a ton of cheap tools now that can be used for running local or citywide networks, hams have their own packet radio stuff. There's now all those new LoRa networks that only really popped up in the past few years. What I'm trying to say is the stuff is there and it's accessible, but it's only going to be a minority of people that use it just as it's a small minority that comments on posts like this (people like us) and even smaller yet again that write content on how to do it and create those tools to begin with. But it has always been this way....

ZoomZoomZoom 1y ago
> What I'm trying to say is the stuff is there and it's accessible, but it's only going to be a minority of people that use it Exactly. This is why the tech has to be made resistant to surveillance and censorship by default. Until usage of alternative connectivity and circumvention methods sticks out as a sore thumb (turns out, for most tools it does), it applies a constant pressure on anyone under oppression to stop, increasing the risks for those who continue to use them.
mschuster91 1y ago
> hams have their own packet radio stuff We got basically three different things. First we got APRS, mostly used for position reports (go on aprs.fi for a map). That is pretty nice but unusable for anything more than a SMS worth of things, and you need repeaters and not just internet gateway collectors to actually have something that's resilient. Next thing is AX25, the technical foundation behind APRS. Yes you can use it to create actual data links, but it's about modem speeds so virtually useless outside of toying around. And finally there is HamNet but it's line of sight based and not cross routed to the internet, and identically to all things ham radio, encryption is banned by law. And on top of that, you can expect regulatory agencies to crack down on ham radio fast and hard, should it be used for political dissency motives at scale. It's already against ham practice to talk politics, especially with people in repressive countries - we don't want more countries other than Yemen and North Korea to just blanket ban ham radio.

one-note 1y ago

The only way to have global uncensored sharing of information is shortwave radio. Always has been, always will be.

LocalH 1y ago
Triangulation exists to locate such stations
- one-note 1y ago
  Did I say untraceable? You’ll be found on the internet too btw. But far more easily.
znano 1y ago
Yeah, also a good source of getting information from the world in full internet shutdowns.
voidUpdate 1y ago
Couldn't someone just jam an active shortwave band?
- one-note 1y ago
  Sure. You play cat and mouse with SNR. Not trivial, but easier than the same with cut cables.

mensetmanusman 1y ago

Maybe, or Starlink and software destabilize the authoritarians.

znano 1y ago
Yes, they will, im saying it with such certainty because of how much they're scared of it. It shows when they criminalize it and call it "spyware". But no matter what they do there will be light at the end. it cannot always be night.

immibis 1y ago

The current global Internet is an anomaly in space and time, and it's held together by spit, prayers, and the hope the reliability gains from multiple redundant paths outweigh the reliability losses from so many distinct actors being involved. It would be quite easy for any major government to cause major problems in global connectivity. So far, they mostly seem content to only cut themselves off, and the ones with the power to mess up the global net don't seem to want to. But the NSA was diverting a whole lot of intra-Europe traffic via the USA at one time so they could snoop it.

Aurornis 1y ago

> Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are. I feel like I’ve been hearing this for decades. During the initial wave of Napster-era piracy debates a lot of people assumed the end of the free internet was near because corporations wouldn’t allow it. > It's simply not going to be possible to meaningfully use the Internet unauthenticated and unapproved in a few years. I will take the opposite of that bet any day. Certain countries like Iran will impose their restrictions, but if you think the average country is going to restrict internet access in only a couple of years I don’t know what to say.

ogurechny 1y ago

Even 20 years ago the so-called “geeks” were reacting to those news with “We can fix that!”, and indeed were making the tools. They were often primitive, but modern ones are based on those developments and collected knowledge. Today's crowd is full of lickspittles who are constantly searching for someone or something to kneel before. Money, power, or at least flavour-of-the-month fame. A lot of work was put into spreading those ideals, and not teaching anything “outdated”, “dissenting” or “controversial”. So you're not just waving the white flag even before anyone intimidates you personally, you're actively working for that cause, willingly or unwillingly. Something tells me that you were not using 56 bit encryption when posting. In a different world, you would, and lament how pathetic and insecure it is to let someone calling themselves “government” have access to everything, but how understandable it is in presence of communists, terrorists, degenerates who have rejected the democratic values and thus stopped being humans, etc. Dystopias and the dystopian outlook actually helps any kind of high profile swindler a lot. People treat them as the portrayal of “how the world really works”, and expect it to be normal when someone does it, or just hints at such option to scare the public, while they were intended to portray how stupid people can be if they cease to think. Please choose some higher standards.

basilgohar 1y ago

This is just pendulum swinging between centralized and distributed. This is true for "online services", the Internet, computing (mainframes, PCs,cloud, mobile, etc.). If it swings one way, it'll swing back eventually. Just look for the innovations that make one option viable compared to others.

znano 1y ago

I have to do more research on NIN, it's hard to know what they're exactly doing.

Spooky23 1y ago

Probably a good thing. End of the day, what happened to Slashdot 20 years ago happened to society - an endless stream of trolls and jerks ruined everything.

walrus01 1y ago

> I wish this article went into more details on what the "National Information Network" is. It's AS12880, the state owned telecom company which all ISPs are obligated to be downstream of. It operates Iran's international links to other global scale ISPs via Turkey and other paths. https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/12880 https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/12880 https://bgp.he.net/AS12880 https://bgp.he.net/AS12880 And its also government run counterpart, the "TIC" https://bgp.he.net/AS49666#_asinfo https://bgp.he.net/AS49666#_asinfo https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=AS12880+iran https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=AS12880+i...