Not quite what the OP is claiming but it looks like the "pipes" are being cut from the other end:
https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/1502298540701323264But that's only a couple of sanctioned telecoms and they'll still have links through Asia.
I wonder how much the Russian people are ready to suffer before they turn against this sad little dictator.
Yeah that's a bit of a problem, isn't it. This won't be easy until Putin runs out of money to pay OMON and you know these will be the last people he'll keep paying. Russians missed their chance of deposing Putin ~10 years ago, he's tightened the screws a lost since then - constitution has been amended, duma votes 100% with him, etc.
OK, this is going to be one of those posts that most non nerds have their eyes glaze over before the end of it.
Others will bitch and complain that what I am saying is not accurate
1Loosing peering is not the removal of the internet, it's the removal of certain internet connections.
It is far from fatal, and probably will not be noticed by most people. Since...wait for it....it's just peering not routing.
Routing is when your PC sends a packet of data to your internet provider who then has to figure out how to get that packet to where you wanted it to go. Since as I mentioned above moving data does cost money they want it to go in the most efficient path possible. LCR (lowest cost routing) think of it as trying to make the shortest trip possible in your car to save gas.
What peering accomplishes or at least tries to, is have many many many of the largest players in the data world have connections all in the same spot. So instead of:
your pc -> your cable company -> across the internet someplace can be many many many hops between providers [which slows things down and costs money]-> google.com
it cuts out that last step before google.com and your cable company more or less is plugging into google.
So with peering you have:
your pc -> your cable company -> cheap peering net ->google.com
Now, this is not exactly accurate but you get the general idea (I hope). LINX / The London Internet Exchange has hundreds and hundreds of the largest internet providers all in on place. So if you are hooked to them everyone is just one data hop away. Now for most people the cost to do peering in terms of money and equipment is a lot. But for major and even large minor players the cost still saves them money. A lot of money.
Loosing LINX will just slow them down, and cost them more money.
More eye glossing geek speak:
What is really going to cause issues is as more and more places stop routing all the data coming out of Russia.
There are things called ASN (Autonomous System Numbers) those are the 2 numbers shown in the document in the tweet AS 31133 and AS 12389 more or less for people who provide data on internet with their own IP space it's the ID of the system. Big core data routers have a list of ASNs and the IPs that go with them. So a quick lookup at he.net (thank you hurricane for this really useful service)
https://bgp.he.net/AS31133 you can see that they have ~ 790,00 IPs and who else they are connected to.
What is being discussed on many networking and routing forums (and actually being done) is just dumping all those IPs connected to any Russian ASNs and their associated routes into a black hole.
That will cause a ton of issues. Since it's almost impossible to diagnose and fix. Russian PC looking for something-> local provider -> the internet -> suchmoon net -> nowhere....
OK, no big deal they can route around that.... So now Russian PC looking for something-> local provider -> the internet -> any route but suchmoon net -> where they want to go.
HOWEVER, the return route to the PC may not be the same one it took to get there..... So where they wanted to go -> suchmoon net or some other provider who decided to block those ASNs/ IPs -> nowhere.....
-Dave
1 For all the routing geeks, yeah I know it's not a perfect description of how it works, but if you can do it better feel free. It does give the general idea however.
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