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The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

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Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#111

Post by 6502nerdface »

tialaramex wrote: post #48
aorth wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait I'm confused. I remember reading a bunch of reports about how China started blocking TLS 1.3 because of encrypted SNI (eSNI) years ago?

Some people interested in the Great Firewall wrote up weirdness they saw with one particular prototype of eSNI years back. A game of Telephone later this became nonsense like "China blocks TLS 1.3" but actually if you do that what you get isn't web sites stripped of protection but connection errors. Which is indeed what happens for some sites from the other side of the Great Firewall, but we just say China blocks tho…

> A game of Telephone

Funny enough the children's "telephone game" is, in many Commonwealth countries, apparently called "Chinese whispers," at least according to my Londoner colleagues.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#113

Post by hnews_account_1 »

aliraheem wrote: post #109
hnews_account_1 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is game theory. Consider what happens in the real world - it is strictly easier for Iran or any country with a competent infrastructure to just shut down the big internet pipelines for retail customers. They don’t do that. China has spent untold amounts of money creating a stupidly effective surveillance state which is still technically open to the internet. Why? So your assumption that “dictators will do the wors…

I said that dictators are *willing* to make their countries poor. That is different from wilfully make them poorer without marginal gain.

They’re not equivalent statements. Dictators can be fine with making their countries poorer but still maintain internet access. There is a critical point (which isn’t well defined because we’re probably the only species in the universe at our level of tech that has no social science of any merit) beyond which policies will start backfiring. At the beginning of their reign, the dictator will take risks and push that window. Once entrenched, they will have to use a lighter touch unless they entirely go the North Korea route (which is difficult to do in 2022).

So in essence, this is a positive move because even dictators willing to destroy their countries for power will have to make a choice on internet access well before they gain enough power to cut it off entirely.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#114

Post by novok »

aliraheem wrote: post #109
hnews_account_1 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is game theory. Consider what happens in the real world - it is strictly easier for Iran or any country with a competent infrastructure to just shut down the big internet pipelines for retail customers. They don’t do that. China has spent untold amounts of money creating a stupidly effective surveillance state which is still technically open to the internet. Why? So your assumption that “dictators will do the wors…

I said that dictators are *willing* to make their countries poor. That is different from wilfully make them poorer without marginal gain.

More accurately is the ruling class wants to stay rich, and if they can stay rich without needing an educated and non-poor populace, all the better, because the hungry, disconnected and illiterate do not start effective revolutions. You see this in many resource dictatorships, since you don't need your populace to create your wealth.

In dictatorships where they need the populace, then they are in a tough spot, because the only way you get rich is having a developed population productive enough to tax, which you see in Singapore, China, Dubai and Iran somewhat.

It is this kind of authoritarian regime that needs the internet, but also wishes they didn't need the internet in the case of Iran and China.

CGP gray has a great youtube video summary explaining this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#115

Post by mehrzad »

aliraheem wrote: post #82
novok wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is you force them to choose the entire effective internet or nothing, which is not an economic self own even most dictatorships are willing to make. These firewalls are an exercise in having your cake and eating it too.

> which is not an economic self own even most dictatorships are willing to make. What basis do you have for this claim? People make these claims constantly so confidently, but wherever I look all I see is that dictators have always been willing to make their nations incredibly poor. > These firewalls are an exercise in having your cake and eating it too. More to the point this isn't the Gordian Knot you think it is.…

>What basis do you have for this claim? People make these claims constantly so confidently, but wherever I look all I see is that dictators have always been willing to make their nations incredibly poor.

Iran lost $17 billion in economic activity by cutting off the entire internet a few years ago for a week. They have not done that this time, making internet outages at specific times of day, etc.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#116

Post by novok »

saurik wrote: post #77
novok wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is you force them to choose the entire effective internet or nothing, which is not an economic self own even most dictatorships are willing to make. These firewalls are an exercise in having your cake and eating it too.

But it doesn't end there... they block the CDN that implements this feature, and then the CDN's customers--who probably didn't care much about the benefits this gives to some of their users but are now losing access to some large customer base--start complaining and migrating off the CDN, which results in the CDN pulling back on the feature. And we know this is what will happen as this is effectively what happened wi…

Yup it's a cat and mouse game, and how much money these dictators represent.

Thankfully? in the case of Iran, many customers do not want to interact with Iran because of US export regulations, so if it breaks that, all the better ironically enough.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#117

Post by athinggoingon »

Roark66 wrote: post #93

You know what is crazy. I recently heard 20% of adult population in Iran is in Revolutionary Guard. This puts things into context for anyone who says "why don't people just overthrow the dictatorship". However, there were dictatorships with an even stronger hold on their population that fell. Usually for economic reasons. I hope Iran's regime will follow.

You're thinking about the Basij: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basij

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#118

Post by pyinstallwoes »

zwkrt wrote: post #108
icedchai wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly are you going to "bypass BGP" on the global Internet? Reaching your trusted peers depends on routing, which means BGP (at least for anything outside of your ASN.)

Well if you want to get rid of BGP then it probably doesn't make sense to talk about ASNs since BGP is a way to connect ASNs... That being said, it does seem very pie-in-the-sky to imagine the entire global internet using decentralized routing without some sort of backbone infra that is at least moderately centralized. There is just too much data. I could imagine mesh networks being more feasible if we were still liv…

All data should only exist within the light cone that it is used within. That means a lot of data is improperly used today in terms of where and how it is moved.

You need a lot less information "over the wire" when it doesn't move as far, and when you can speculate and predict what to render (ML/AI). What matters is the package and space more than anything. Go figure. That's also why "massively distributed compute/swarm computation" makes sense in this mesh like model you hint at.

The future is strictly local data unless we totally escape time dialation over large distances, whether or not we bypass speed of light limits.

The future is strictly a simulation if we are a multi-galaxy species, let alone spread across the galaxy. The only way to have a real-time conversation is to simulate the person/ego. The local copies would be as real/eventually consistent as possible over time.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#119

Post by pyinstallwoes »

icedchai wrote: post #107
pyinstallwoes wrote: post #94

The only real solution long-term is completely peer-to-peer ad-hoc networking that doesn't depend on BGP. A few projects are in similar territory but none I've seen are working at the layer of bypassing BGP. Many are just acting as an overlay; which works to an extent. https://github.com/yggdrasil-network/yggdrasil-go It's probably begging for a different model of the "internet" and where data lives. My requirements:…

How exactly are you going to "bypass BGP" on the global Internet? Reaching your trusted peers depends on routing, which means BGP (at least for anything outside of your ASN.)

By having a determinstic way to talk based on what you want to talk about.

Call it, determinitic-spontaneous-rendezvous-routing.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#120

Post by vkou »

bobthepanda wrote: post #105
culi wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example given was "public roads"

States can, and do, maintain the power to maintain or close public roads. In fact, they do so daily at border checkpoints, and do so locally in cases like local natural disaster risk (e.g. hurricane or wildfire evacuation).

Or in the case of local social disaster risk, like, say, riots, protests, or public gatherings.
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