This lecture tells the story of Internet infrastructure transformations in Crimea, the peninsula disputed between Russia and Ukraine between 2014 and 2018. It is based on an extensive year-long study involving network measurements and interviews with key players. Crimea has become a "laboratory" where we can observe, in just 4 years, a rapid and profound transition of infrastructure, that deeply impacted the Internet Service Provider market, routing trajectories, Internet censorship practices in the region. Annexation has transformed the way Crimea is plugged to the "outer world" - in terms of peering and transit relations between various autonomous systems, creating a much more centralized infrastructure and monopolized market. This, in its turn, had an important impact for Crimean end-users - in terms of quality, speed, price of Internet service, as well as in terms of Internet censorship and various traffic anomalies that they experience. Moreover, server-side geoblocking by online payment platforms, Google Play, Apple and other important services, is imposed on Crimean users, because of international sanctions that have a controversial impact, including a risk of overblocking, further isolation of Crimean civil society and reinforcing a more general trend towards "balkanization" of the Internet(s). [1]
This talk is based on a one-year long research conducted at Citizen Lab [2], using a mixed methods approach. On the one hand, we conducted network measurements with OONI probe [3], testing a set of URLs from Crimean vantage points, and comparing results with mainland Russia and Ukraine. We have done an analysis of BGP routing history, and AS neighbouring history, using data from RIPE and CAIDA in collaboration with researchers behind the "Internet Health Report" initiative [4] using the recently deployed methodology of "AS Hegemony Index" [5]. On the other hand, we conducted an extensive qualitative study, including interviews with Crimean ISPs, Ukrainian and R
