Interfax: Russia not planning to limit internet traffic, nationalize domains – minister

(Interfax – October 2, 2014) The Russian authorities have no plans to limit the number of trans-border internet exchange points (IXP) or to regulate the management of the country’s local domains, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 2 October.

“Such an idea is not on the agenda,” Russian Telecommunications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov told journalists answering a question as to whether the idea to limit the number of Russian operators having trans-border internet channels is still on the table.

Besides, he said he is satisfied with the performance of the Coordination Centre for TLD RU that is currently administering Russia’s English-language .ru and Russian-language .rf domains. “The Coordination Centre performs its duties well,” Nikiforov said, not ruling out that there may be a need “for additional regulation of the basic [internet] infrastructure”.

He added that there are no plans to move DNS (Domain Name Servers) to Russia. DNS are internet directories that convert a URL address into an IP address.

“We just want to have organizational and technical procedures that will allow us to take it (the internet infrastructure Interfax) up in case of any events (cyber attacks Interfax),” he said.

“We do not rule out that those may be some international arrangements,” he said, adding that this option will be a better guarantee of the internet infrastructure’s reliability than a decision taken by one individual country.

IXP is an infrastructure through which internet service providers exchange internet traffic between their networks.