Russia took 13th place in the Qrator Labs national internet stability rating

Russia has strengthened its position in the ranking of countries with the most stable national segment of the Internet, moving up one position compared to last year. Russian communications providers and Internet companies say they have increased network capacity and expanded backup capabilities to the international segment of the Internet. Analysts note that Russia was able to improve its position in the ranking due to a drop in network connectivity in Singapore.

Kommersant got acquainted with the annual report on the sustainability of national segments of the Internet by Qrator Labs (specializing in network security). The study takes into account operators whose failure could lead to the loss of global availability of the largest percentage of autonomous systems in the national segment of the Internet. The results include 187 countries, among which Russia rose from 14th to 13th place, that is, its Internet segment has become more stable. Brazil, Germany and the Netherlands remained the leaders of the ranking.

The maximum percentage of possible network failures in the country was 5.34%, a year earlier – 5.50%. This means that fewer networks in Russia will lose availability if the largest national telecom operator, Rostelecom, fails. In terms of reliability (connectivity) of networks of telecom operators of the Russian Federation, according to the Qrator Labs rating, first place was taken by Transtelecom, second by Vimpelcom, third by MegaFon, fourth by Rostelecom, fifth by technological networks VK (Digital Transformation Plus) ), sixth – MTS.

Last year, Russia lost four positions in the ranking of countries with the most stable segment of the national Internet. The indicators were also affected by increased consolidation in the market (see Kommersant on September 7). This year, Russia slightly improved its position in the ranking both due to an increase in the level of reliability and due to a sharp drop in Singapore, from 4th to 15th place, explain Qrator Labs.

VimpelCom said that over the past year they have modernized the transport network and increased its stability. “The expansion of bandwidth made it possible to provide backup access to the international segment of the Internet,” the operator said. MTS pays attention to expanding connections with content and service providers, global platforms and CDN (content delivery network) owners, the operator says.

MegaFon noted that the company began to use additional traffic control and management systems, which increased the level of network stability.

Transtelecom is working to improve the infrastructure reliability of the Internet, diversify international traffic delivery routes and interact with foreign traffic exchange points, the operator said. Rostelecom and Tele2 declined to comment. VK did not respond to the request.

“Runet was able to adapt to new conditions by developing technical and organizational measures for stability; new ways of interaction with foreign providers and equipment suppliers played an important role,” says Denis Sivtsov, head of network protection at the L3–L4 level, DDoS-Guard. At the same time, due to the absorption of smaller providers by large players, competition is reduced, and in the future this may lead to the degradation of certain areas of the telecom business, the expert warns.

Nowadays, most financial, consumer services and government services, not to mention critical infrastructure, are tied to the network, so operators constantly carry out operations to protect it and exercises in case of attacks and outages, says Rustem Khairetdinov, deputy general director of the Garda Group of Companies. The current geopolitical situation contributes to the segmentation of the Internet into sovereign networks, the expert recalls, therefore, among the scenarios for testing the stability of the national network, there is also the option of completely disconnecting the country from the Internet from the outside. Kommersant wrote in mid-summer that for almost a year and a half since the start of hostilities in Ukraine, the separation of the Russian segment of the Internet from the international one has sharply intensified (see Kommersant, July 21).

Tatiana Isakova