Runet
Encyclopedia
Currently Internet access in Russia is available to businesses and home users in various forms, including dial-up, cable
DOCSIS
Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-speed data transfer to an existing cable TV system...

, DSL, FTTH, mobile, wireless and satellite

In September 2011, Russia overtook Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 as the market with the highest number of unique visitors online.

Early history

Retrospectively, "networking" of "data" in the Russian language can be traced to the spread of mail
Mail
Mail, or post, is a system for transporting letters and other tangible objects: written documents, typically enclosed in envelopes, and also small packages are delivered to destinations around the world. Anything sent through the postal system is called mail or post.In principle, a postal service...

 and journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

 in Russia, and information transfer by technical means came to Russia with the telegraph and radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 (besides, a 1837 sci-fi novel Year 4338, by the 19-century Russian philosopher Vladimir Odoevsky
Vladimir Odoevsky
Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky was a prominent Russian philosopher, writer, music critic, philanthropist and pedagogue. He became known as the "Russian Hoffmann" on account of his keen interest in fantasmagoric tales and musical criticism.-Life:...

, contains predictions such as "friends' houses are connected by means of magnetic telegraphs that allow people who live far from each other to talk to each other" and "household journals" "having replaced regular correspondence" with "information about the hosts’ good or bad health, family news, various thoughts and comments, small inventions, as well as invitations").

Computing systems became known in the USSR by the 1950s
History of computer hardware in Soviet Bloc countries
The history of computing hardware in the former Soviet Bloc is somewhat different from that of the Western world. As a result of the CoCom embargo, computers could not be imported in a large scale from capitalist countries...

. Starting from 1952, works were held in the Moscow-based Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering
Lebedev Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering
Lebedev Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering is a Russian research institution. It used to be a Soviet Academy of Sciences organization in Soviet times...

 (headed by Sergei Lebedev
Sergei Alekseyevich Lebedev
Sergey Alexeyevich Lebedev was a Soviet scientist in the fields of electrical engineering and computer science, and designer of the first Soviet computers....

) on automated missile defense
Missile defense
Missile defense is a system, weapon, or technology involved in the detection, tracking, interception and destruction of attacking missiles. Originally conceived as a defence against nuclear-armed Intercontinental ballistic missiles , its application has broadened to include shorter-ranged...

 system which used a "computer network" which calculated radar data on test missiles through central machine called M-40 and was interchanging information with smaller remote terminals about 100—200 kilometers distant. The scientists used several locations in the USSR for their works, the largest was a massive test range to the West from Lake Balkhash
Lake Balkhash
Lake Balkhash is one of the largest lakes in Asia and 12th largest continental lake in the world. It is located in southeastern Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, and belongs to an endorheic basin shared by Kazakhstan and China, with a small part in Kyrgyzstan. The basin drains into the lake via seven...

. In the meantime amateur radio
Amateur radio
Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...

 users all over USSR were conducting "P2P
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...

" connections with their comrades worldwide using data codes. Later, a massive "automated data network" called Express was launched in 1972 to serve needs of Russian Railways
Russian Railways
The Russian Railways , is the government owned national rail carrier of the Russian Federation, headquartered in Moscow. The Russian Railways operate over of common carrier routes as well as a few hundred kilometers of industrial routes, making it the second largest network in the world exceeded...

.

From early 1980s the All Union Scientific Research Institute for Applied Computerized Systems (VNIIPAS) was working to implement data connections over the X.25
X.25
X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet switched wide area network communication. An X.25 WAN consists of packet-switching exchange nodes as the networking hardware, and leased lines, Plain old telephone service connections or ISDN connections as physical links...

 telephone protocol. A test Soviet connection to Austria in 1982 existed, in 1982 and 1983 there were series of "world computer conferences" at VNIIPAS initiated by the U. N. where USSR was represented by a team of scientists from many Soviet Republics headed by biochemist Anatoly Klyosov; the other participating countries were UK, USA, Canada, Sweden, FRG, GDR, Italy, Finland, Philippines, Guatemala, Japan, Thailand, Luxembourg, Denmark, Brazil and New Zealand.

Also, in 1983 the San Francisco Moscow Teleport (SFMT) project was started by VNIIPAS and an American team which included George Soros
George Soros
George Soros is a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, philosopher, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros supports progressive-liberal causes...

. It resulted in the creation in the latter 80s of the data transfer operator SovAm (Soviet-American) Teleport. Meanwhile, on April 1, 1984 a Fool's Day
April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day is celebrated in different countries around the world on April 1 every year. Sometimes referred to as All Fools' Day, April 1 is not a national holiday, but is widely recognized and celebrated as a day when many people play all kinds of jokes and foolishness...

 hoax about "Kremlin computer" Kremvax
Kremvax
Kremvax was originally a fictitious Usenet site at the Kremlin, named like the then large number of Usenet VAXen with names of the form foovax. Kremvax was announced on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there by Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually forged by...

 was made in English-speaking Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

. There are reports of spontaneous Internet (UUCP
UUCP
UUCP is an abbreviation for Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers. Specifically, a command named uucp is one of the programs in the suite; it...

 and telnet
TELNET
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...

) connections "from home" through X.25 in the USSR in as early as 1988. In 1990 a GlasNet non-profit initiative by the US-based Association for Progressive Communications
Association for Progressive Communications
The Association for Progressive Communications is an international network of organizations that was founded in 1990 to provide communication infrastructure, including Internet-based applications, to groups and individuals who work for peace, human rights, protection of the environment, and...

 sponsored Internet usage in several educational projects in the USSR (through Sovam).

Mass usage

In 1990—1991 Relcom's network was rapidly expanding, it joined EUnet
EUnet
The roots of EUnet go back to 1982 and the first international UUCP connections. From a very loose collaboration of individual sites under the auspices of the EUUG , it evolved to the fully commercial entity EUnet International Ltd.In April 1998 the company was sold to Qwest Communications...

 and was used to spread news about the Soviet coup attempt of 1991
Soviet coup attempt of 1991
The 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt , also known as the August Putsch or August Coup , was an attempt by a group of members of the Soviet Union's government to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev...

 worldwide while coupers through KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

 were trying to suppress mass media activity on the subject. After the fall of the USSR
History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991)
The history of the Soviet Union from 1982 through 1991, spans the period from Leonid Brezhnev's death and funeral until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Due to the years of Soviet military buildup at the expense of domestic development, economic growth stagnated...

 many former Soviet state-controlled structures were inherited by the Russian Federation, vast telephone networks among them. With the transformation of the economy, market
Market
A market is one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services in exchange for money from buyers...

-based telecommunication industries grew quickly, various ISPs appeared.

Meanwhile, the first Russian FidoNet
FidoNet
FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early to mid 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet...

 node reportedly started in October 1990 in Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the largest city of Siberia, with a population of 1,473,737 . It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District...

, and the USSR was included in FidoNet's Region 50. Russian FidoNet activity did contribute to development of Runet, as mass-networking over BBSes
Bulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...

 was for a time more popular than over the Internet in the early 90s.

By the mid 1990s, computer networks (where TCP/IP was replacing UUCP) appeared in many branches of regular life and commerce in Post-Soviet states
Post-Soviet states
The post-Soviet states, also commonly known as the Former Soviet Union or former Soviet republics, are the 15 independent states that split off from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in its dissolution in December 1991...

. The Internet became a popular means of communication for anyone in the world who spoke Russian. National so-called Nets of former Soviet Republics began to occur (e.g. Uznet, Kaznet and others).

In October 2007 then Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is the third President of the Russian Federation.Born to a family of academics, Medvedev graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987. He defended his dissertation in 1990 and worked as a docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint...

 announced that all of the schools in Russia (about 59,000) were connected to the Internet, but later concerns were publicized that there were problems with a contractor to serve them. Also in December 2007, as a follow-up to the noted Ponosov's Case
Ponosov's Case
Ponosov's case is an action against Aleksandr Ponosov, a teacher and principal of a high school in Sepych village of Perm Krai of Russia. Aleksandr Ponosov was charged with illegal use of unlicensed copies of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office on 12 computers being used in the school and of...

, which dealt with the use of illegal software in a Russian school, plans were announced to officially test Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 in the schools of Perm Krai
Perm Krai
Perm Krai is a federal subject of Russia that came into existence on December 1, 2005 as a result of the 2004 referendum on the merger of Perm Oblast and Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug. The city of Perm became the administrative center of the new federal subject...

, Tatarstan
Tatarstan
The Republic of Tatarstan is a federal subject of Russia located in the Volga Federal District. Its capital is the city of Kazan, which is one of Russia's largest and most prosperous cities. The republic borders with Kirov, Ulyanovsk, Samara, and Orenburg Oblasts, and with the Mari El, Udmurt,...

 and Tomsk Oblast
Tomsk Oblast
Tomsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . It lies in the southeastern West Siberian Plain, in the southwest of the Siberian Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Tomsk. Population:...

 to determine the feasibility of further implementing Linux-based education in the country's other regions. In subsequent years test results were considered successful, but new organizational problems appeared, including obscurities with distribution of funds assigned by state.

Population

The prominent Public Opinion Foundation FOM (ФОМ) in March 2007 issued a report that found 28 million people 18+ in Russia (25%) had used the internet within the last six months (monthly users 23.9/21%; daily 10.1/9%). In November 2006 TNS Gallup Media in a report called by some sources "first quality Internet audience research in Russia" put a monthly Russian audience at more than 15 million. The Rukv.ru monitoring project found 1,001,806 WWW-addresses within .ru and .su responding in March 2008. The national domain registration service RU-Center announced creation of millionth .ru domain on September 17, 2007 (about 200 thousand of domains are thought to be 'parked' by squatters
Cybersquatting
Cybersquatting , according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else...

).

On April 3, 2008, the RIF
Russian Internet Forum
Russian Internet Forum is the annual conference where people who feel they build the Runet meet.Those include members of Russian telecom and software industries, representatives of various Internet businesses and state institutions such as Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communications , Ministry...

-2008 was opened by president-elect
President-elect
An -elect is a political candidate who has been elected to an office but who has not yet been sworn in or officially taken office. These may include an incoming president, senator, representative, governor and mayor.Analogously, the term "designate" An -elect is a political candidate who has been...

 of Russia Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is the third President of the Russian Federation.Born to a family of academics, Medvedev graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987. He defended his dissertation in 1990 and worked as a docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint...

 who said in the opening address to the forum that he estimates Runet to be populated by 40 million users, or 28 percent of the population. He also stated that Russian sites do $3 billion in annual transactions and have $370 million in advertising revenue.

In October 2008 President Medvedev started his own video blog which in April 2009 was expanded with the separately moderated version in LiveJournal
LiveJournal
LiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....

.

In June 2009 FOM issued results of its new survey that found "half-year audience" of people 18 years old and over was 33%, or 37,5 million.

CIA World Factbook states there were 10.382 million internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 hosts in 2008 and 40.853 million internet users in 2010.

By March 2011 the total number of broadband subscribers reached 16.5 million with penetration almost 30%. These numbers increased within two years by 180% against 9 million in 2009. The highest penetration rate above 70% is in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 and Saint-Petersburg, these two cities also makes up a forth of all subscribers (3.2 and 1.2 million respectively).

Backbone

The development of Internet infrastructure in Russia began with development analog modem-based computer network
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

s in Soviet cities, primarily in scientific institutions. The first one to connect UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

 hosts country-wide (including Soviet Republics) was the Relcom
RELCOM
RELCOM or Relcom , an acronym for "RELiable COMmunications" is a computer network in Russia. It was launched in the Soviet Union on August 1, 1990 in the Kurchatov Institute in collaboration with DEMOS co-operative RELCOM or Relcom , an acronym for "RELiable COMmunications" is a computer network in...

organization which formed on August 1, 1990 at the Kurchatov nuclear physics institute
Kurchatov Institute
The Kurchatov Institute is Russia's leading research and development institution in the field of nuclear energy. In the Soviet Union it was known as I. V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy , abbreviated KIAE . It is named after Igor Kurchatov....

 in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

. They were functioning together with partner programming cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...

 Demos, named after the Soviet-made DEMOS
DEMOS
DEMOS was a Unix-like operating system developed in the Soviet Union...

 Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

 operating system. In August 1990 they established regular email routing with an Internet node in Helsinki University over a paid voice line.

Plenty of local commercial ISPs function in large cities, but most of the existing country-wide cable lines are held by small number of large operators such as former "monopolist", the state-controlled Rostelecom
Rostelecom
Rostelecom network, which as of August 2006, covered Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Volgograd, Stavropol, and planned to cover the whole of Russia by the end of 2006.-Satellite network:...

 and the railways-affiliated Transtelecom, which operates country biggest DWDM fiber backbone. Coverage by mobile phone networks with digital services such as GPRS is almost total. In year 2007 the Golden Telecom
Golden Telecom
Golden Telecom is a trademark of EDN Sovintel, LLC , of Russia.In 2008, Sovintel was acquired by Vimpelcom .-Golden Telecom Inc.:Golden Telecom Inc. is an offshore company to support operations of Golden Telecom.-History:...

 company constructed massive Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...

 network in Moscow for commercial use which was recognized the largest urban wireless network in the world. The Black Sea coast of Russia is an important strategic area for fiber-optic networks, as it will provide the backbone communications for the Winter Olympic Games in 2014.

On October 2010 mobile operator MegaFon has selected Huawei NE5000E routers to construct backbone nodes for a 40-Gbit/s IP/MPLS network in Russia' s largest cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, Huawei says. Meanwhile, MegaFon also announced the opening of what it touts as Russia’s largest data center in Samara
Samara, Russia
Samara , is the sixth largest city in Russia. It is situated in the southeastern part of European Russia at the confluence of the Volga and Samara Rivers. Samara is the administrative center of Samara Oblast. Population: . The metropolitan area of Samara-Tolyatti-Syzran within Samara Oblast...

.

On 2011 Rostelecom started implementation of WDM
Wavelength-division multiplexing
In fiber-optic communications, wavelength-division multiplexing is a technology which multiplexes a number of optical carrier signals onto a single optical fiber by using different wavelengths of laser light...

-based equipment on the backbone network for data transmission in the Republic of Dagestan. Due to WDM introduction the fiber-optic communication lines bandwidth increased to 2.5 Gbit/s. Rostelecom invested about 48 million rubles in the project.

See also

  • Telecommunications in Russia
  • Internet Exchange Points in Russia
    Internet Exchange Points in Russia
    Public Internet Exchange Points in Russia comprise of MSK-IX in Moscow, SPB-IX in Saint-Petersburg, SAMARA-IX in Samara, Ix-NN , NSK-IX in Novosibirsk, KRS-IX in Krasnoyarsk and in Kazan....

  • Russian Wikipedia
    Russian Wikipedia
    The Russian Wikipedia is the Russian language edition of Wikipedia. It has over articles. It was founded on 20 May 2001. By May 2008 it became the 10th largest Wikipedia by size and in February 2011 it ranked 8th. It surpassed 750,000 articles in August 2011...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK