Reasoning
Internet is usually defined as a global set of interconnected computer nodes that can communicate with each other. There are many computer networks, but only one Internet. Generally, a node is part of the Internet if it can reach machines that are on the Internet.
Hence, the phrase “network that is not part of the global network” means:
- Network is small compared to the global network.
- Network cannot access the significant part of resources outside itself but within the global network.
Imagine an average user’s request on the World Wide (!) Web outside of Russia. Chances are high it will use some of the inaccessible enities below.
UGC platforms: YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram, Discord, LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, Proton/Startmail and thousands more.
Infrastructure platforms: Cloudflare (default proxy settings), networks of OVH, Hetzner, Linode. Public DoT and DoH resolvers. Tor.
Protocols: VPN, downgradable HTTP/3, DNSSEC, IPv6.
In my opinion, with the recent increase in censorship, things shifted from “by default, resource is available in Russia” to “by default, resource is unavailable in Russia due to network connectivity issues”. Runet is no longer part of the Internet.
Implications
Improvements made to some resource on the Internet (such as better content provider, CDN, server location, encryption and modern protocols in general) or absense of changes will likely lead to the service degradation in Russia. Network restrictions there are non-judicial, therefore unpredictable. Staying available in this region requires some mix of provider-hopping, security downgrading and complication of infrastructure. Choices made for the Russia Wide Web are often detrimental for the World Wide Web. The reasonable conclusion is as follows:
Russian users are not connected to the Internet. Your service isn’t broken if it is unreachable. Availability in Runet is not the problem unless you separately want to support this local computer network. Users connect to the Internet when they bypass network restrictions.
Is it good to contribute to the network which at the protocol level implements censorship, no privacy and does MiTM-by-design? Should encryption be disabled in the situation it was created for? Does it set a bad precedent? I don’t know.
Personal experience
Here is a list of reputable large companies whose services I use to be online:
- OVH. Place where I host email, xmpp, git, filesystem utils, etc.
- Hetzner. Storage for backups and fallback option in case of problems at OVH.
- Cloudflare. Hosting for the website you currently see, dns manager.
- Protonmail. Root email for ICANN, registrar and zone management.
- Registrar.
Bans affect the current website, its subdomains, and message deliverability to my primary server at OVH. For Cloudflare, there is a workaround - downgrading TLS version to 1.2. I will apply it for 1 month, until 2024-12-13.