Russian Internet Segment Architecture

As many of our readers know, Qrator.Radar is constantly researching global BGP connectivity, as well as regional. Since the Internet stands for “Interconnected Networks,” to ensure the best possible quality and speed the interconnectivity of individual networks should be rich and diverse, with their growth motivated on a sound competitive basis.

The fault-resistance of an internet connection in any given region or country is tied to the number of alternate routes between ASes. Though, as we stated before in our Internet Segments Reliability reports, some paths are obviously more critical compared to the others (for example, the paths to the Tier-1 transit ISPs or autonomous systems hosting authoritative DNS servers), which means that having as many reachable routes as possible is the only viable way to ensure adequate system scalability, stability and robustness.

This time, we are going to have a closer look at the Russian Federation internet segment. There are reasons to keep an eye on that segment: according to the numbers provided by the RIPE database, there are 6183 autonomous systems in Russia, out of 88664 registered worldwide, which stands for 6.87% of total.

This percentage puts Russia on a second place in the world, right after the USA (30.08% of registered ASes) and before Brazil, owning 6.34% of all autonomous systems. Effects of changes in the Russian connectivity could be observed across many other countries dependant on or adjacent to that connectivity, and ultimately by almost any ISP in the world.

The overview

Diagram 1. AS distribution among countries, top 20

In IPv4 ISPs from Russian Federation announce 33933 out of 774859 globally visible prefixes, which translates into 4.38% and puts Russian internet segment on the fifth place of such rating. Those, explicitly RU-announced prefixes cover 4.3*10^7 of unique IP-addresses out of 2.9*10^9 announced globally — 1.51%, 11th place.


Diagram 2. Network prefix number distribution among countries in IPv4, top 20

In IPv6 ISPs from Russian Federation announce 1831 out of 65532 globally visible prefixes, which is 2.79% and place 7. Those prefixes cover 1.3*10^32 of unique IPv6 addresses out of 1.5*10^34 globally announced — 0.84%, 18th place.


Diagram 3. Network prefix number distribution in IPv6 among countries, top 20

One of many ways to evaluate the country’s Internet connectivity and reliability is to rank the autonomous systems within the country by the number of prefixes announced. This method is vulnerable to route deaggregation, which is gradually balanced eventually by the excessive filtering of the de-aggregated prefixes in the ISP equipment due to the constant inevitable growth of route tables, which consumes memory.

The individual scale

	IPv4 top 20			IPv6 top 20
ASN	AS Name	Number of prefixes	ASN	AS Name	Number of prefixes
12389	ROSTELECOM-AS	2279	31133	MF-MGSM-AS	56
8402	CORBINA-AS	1283	59504	vpsville-AS	51
24955	UBN-AS	1197	39811	MTSNET-FAR-EAST-AS	30
3216	SOVAM-AS	930	57378	ROSTOV-AS	26
35807	SkyNet-SPB-AS	521	12389	ROSTELECOM-AS	20
44050	PIN-AS	366	42385	RIPN-RU	20
197695	AS-REGRU	315	51604	EKAT-AS	19
12772	ENFORTA-AS	291	51819	YAR-AS	19
41704	OGS-AS	235	50543	SARATOV-AS	18
57129	RU-SERVERSGET-KRSK	225	52207	TULA-AS	18
31133	MF-MGSM-AS	216	206066	TELEDOM-AS	18
49505	SELECTEL	213	57026	CHEB-AS	18
12714	TI-AS	195	49037	MGL-AS	17
15774	TTK-RTL	193	41682	ERTH-TMN-AS	17
12418	QUANTUM	191	21191	ASN-SEVERTTK	16
50340	SELECTEL-MSK	188	41843	ERTH-OMSK-AS	15
28840	TATTELECOM-AS	184	42682	ERTH-NNOV-AS	15
50113	SuperServersDatacenter	181	50498	LIPETSK-AS	15
31163	MF-KAVKAZ-AS	176	50542	VORONEZH-AS	15
21127	ZSTTKAS	162	51645	IRKUTSK-AS	15

Table 1. AS size by the prefix count

We use the aggregated size of announced address space as a more reliable metric of comparable size for the autonomous system which reflects the autonomous systems potential and scalability limit. Such metric is not always relevant in IPv6 due to both RIPE NCC’s existing IPv6 address allocation policies and the redundancy in the protocol design. That is continuously balanced by the growth of IPv6 segment within the Russian internet segment and IPv6 BCP evolution.

	IPv4 top 20			IPv6 top 20
ASN	AS Name	Number of IP-addresses	ASN	AS Name	Number of IP-addresses
12389	ROSTELECOM-AS	8994816	59504	vpsville-AS	2.76*10^30
8402	CORBINA-AS	2228864	49335	NCONNECT-AS	2.06*10^30
12714	TI-AS	1206272	8359	MTS	1.43*10^30
8359	MTS	1162752	50113	SuperServersDatacenter	1.35*10^30
3216	SOVAM-AS	872608	201211	DRUGOYTEL-AS	1.27*10^30
31200	NTK	566272	34241	NCT-AS	1.27*10^30
42610	NCNET-AS	523264	202984	team-host	1.27*10^30
25513	ASN-MGTS-USPD	414464	12695	DINET-AS	9.51*10^29
39927	Elight-AS	351744	206766	INETTECH1-AS	8.72*10^29
20485	TRANSTELECOM	350720	20485	TRANSTELECOM	7.92*10^29
8342	RTCOMM-AS	350464	12722	RECONN	7.92*10^29
28840	TATTELECOM-AS	336896	47764	mailru-as	7.92*10^29
8369	INTERSVYAZ-AS	326912	44050	PIN-AS	7.13*10^29
28812	JSCBIS-AS	319488	45027	INETTECH-AS	7.13*10^29
12332	PRIMORYE-AS	303104	3267	RUNNET	7.13*10^29
20632	PETERSTAR-AS	284416	34580	UNITLINE_MSK_NET1	7.13*10^29
8615	CNT-AS	278528	25341	LINIYA-AS	7.13*10^29
35807	SkyNet-SPB-AS	275968	60252	OST-LLC-AS	7.13*10^29
3267	RUNNET	272640	28884	MR-SIB-MTSAS	6.73*10^29
41733	ZTELECOM-AS	266240	42244	ESERVER	6.44*10^29

Table 2. AS size by the aggregated IP count

Both metrics — the number of announced prefixes and the aggregated size of announced address space — could be manipulated easily. Though we haven’t yet seen such behavior among the ASes in the scope of this research.

The connectivity

There are 3 major types of relation between autonomous systems:

• Client: paying another AS for traffic transit;
• Peering partner: an AS exchanging (both own or clients’) traffic for free;
• Provider: receiving payments for traffic transit from the other AS.

Usually, those types of relations are the same for all the peering relations between two ISPs, which proves itself right for the Russian Federation. However, it also happens sometimes that two ISPs have different relations in different regions, e.g. peer freely in Europe but have commercial relations in Asia.

	IPv4 top 20			IPv6 top 20
ASN	AS Name	Amount of customers within a region	ASN	AS Name	Amount of customers within a region
12389	ROSTELECOM-AS	818	20485	TRANSTELECOM	94
3216	SOVAM-AS	667	12389	ROSTELECOM-AS	82
20485	TRANSTELECOM	589	31133	MF-MGSM-AS	77
31133	MF-MGSM-AS	467	20764	RASCOM-AS	72
8359	MTS	313	3216	SOVAM-AS	70
20764	RASCOM-AS	223	9049	ERTH-TRANSIT-AS	58
9049	ERTH-TRANSIT-AS	220	8359	MTS	51
8732	COMCOR-AS	170	29076	CITYTELECOM-AS	40
2854	ROSPRINT-AS	152	31500	GLOBALNET-AS	32
29076	CITYTELECOM-AS	143	3267	RUNNET	26
29226	MASTERTEL-AS	143	25478	IHOME-AS	22
28917	Fiord-AS	96	28917	Fiord-AS	21
25159	SONICDUO-AS	94	199599	CIREX	17
3267	RUNNET	93	29226	MASTERTEL-AS	13
31500	GLOBALNET-AS	87	8732	COMCOR-AS	12
13094	SFO-IX-AS	80	35000	PROMETEY	12
31261	GARS-AS	80	49063	DTLN	11
25478	IHOME-AS	78	42861	FOTONTELECOM	10
12695	DINET-AS	76	56534	PIRIX-INET-AS	9
8641	NAUKANET-AS	73	48858	Milecom-as	8

Table 3. AS connectivity by the customer amount

The number of clients for an AS showcases a role of an ISP as a direct upstream internet service provider for commercial customers.

	IPv4 top 20			IPv6 top 20
ASN	AS Name	Number of peering partners in a region	ASN	AS Name	Number of peering partners in a region
13238	YANDEX	638	13238	YANDEX	266
43267	First_Line-SP_for_b2b_customers	579	9049	ERTH-TRANSIT-AS	201
9049	ERTH-TRANSIT-AS	498	60357	MEGAGROUP-AS	189
201588	MOSCONNECT-AS	497	41617	SOLID-IFC	177
44020	CLN-AS	474	41268	LANTA-AS	176
41268	LANTA-AS	432	3267	RUNNET	86
15672	TZTELECOM	430	31133	MF-MGSM-AS	78
39442	UNICO-AS	424	60764	TK-Telecom	74
39087	PAKT-AS	422	12389	ROSTELECOM-AS	52
199805	UGO-AS	418	42861	FOTONTELECOM	32
200487	FASTVPS	417	8359	MTS	28
41691	SUMTEL-AS-RIPE	399	20764	RASCOM-AS	26
13094	SFO-IX-AS	388	20485	TRANSTELECOM	17
60357	MEGAGROUP-AS	368	28917	Fiord-AS	16
41617	SOLID-IFC	347	31500	GLOBALNET-AS	14
51674	Mehanika-AS	345	60388	TRANSNEFT-TELECOM-AS	14
49675	SKBKONTUR-AS	343	42385	RIPN-RU	13
35539	INFOLINK-T-AS	310	3216	SOVAM-AS	12
42861	FOTONTELECOM	303	49063	DTLN	12
25227	ASN-AVANTEL-MSK	301	44843	OBTEL-AS	11

Table 4. AS connectivity by the number of peering partners

A large number of peers could significantly improve the region’s overall connectivity. Internet Exchanges are important, nevertheless not necessary — biggest ISPs usually don’t participate in regional exchange points (with some notable exceptions, such as NIXI) due to the very nature of their business.

For a content provider, number of peers often indicates the volume of generated traffic — a stimulus of a free-of-charge exchange of heavy amounts of traffic is a motivation factor quite sufficient for most local ISPs to recognize a content provider as a good candidate for a peering connection. There are cases however when content providers don’t maintain a policy for excessive regional peering, which makes such an indicator not very precise in evaluating the size of content providers, i.e., the amount of traffic generated.

	IPv4 top 20			IPv6 top 20
ASN	AS Name	Customer cone size	ASN	AS Name	Customer cone size
3216	SOVAM-AS	3083	31133	MF-MGSM-AS	335
12389	ROSTELECOM-AS	2973	20485	TRANSTELECOM	219
20485	TRANSTELECOM	2587	12389	ROSTELECOM-AS	205
8732	COMCOR-AS	2463	8732	COMCOR-AS	183
31133	MF-MGSM-AS	2318	20764	RASCOM-AS	166
8359	MTS	2293	3216	SOVAM-AS	143
20764	RASCOM-AS	2251	8359	MTS	143
9049	ERTH-TRANSIT-AS	1407	3267	RUNNET	88
29076	CITYTELECOM-AS	860	29076	CITYTELECOM-AS	84
28917	Fiord-AS	683	28917	Fiord-AS	70
3267	RUNNET	664	9049	ERTH-TRANSIT-AS	65
25478	IHOME-AS	616	31500	GLOBALNET-AS	54
43727	KVANT-TELECOM	476	25478	IHOME-AS	33
31500	GLOBALNET-AS	459	199599	CIREX	24
57724	DDOS-GUARD	349	43727	KVANT-TELECOM	20
13094	SFO-IX-AS	294	39134	UNITEDNET	20
199599	CIREX	290	15835	MAP	15
29226	MASTERTEL-AS	227	29226	MASTERTEL-AS	14
201706	AS-SERVICEPIPE	208	35000	PROMETEY	14
8641	NAUKANET-AS	169	49063	DTLN	13

Table 5. AS connectivity by the customer cone size

The customer cone is a set of all ASes that are directly or indirectly dependent on given autonomous systems. Economically, every AS in the customer cone is a paying client, either directly or indirectly. On a higher level, the number of ASes within a given customer cone, as well as the number of direct customers, is the crucial connectivity factor.

Finally, we have got one more table, representing connectivity to the core of the Internet. When we know the customer cone size for each AS in the region, we could calculate how far they are from the region’ biggest transit ISPs. The lower the number — the better connectivity is. “1” stands for all visible routes there are the direct connection with the regional core available.

	IPv4 top 20			IPv6 top 20
ASN	AS Name	Connectivity rating	ASN	AS Name	Connectivity rating
8997	ASN-SPBNIT	1.0	21109	CONTACT-AS	1.0
47764	mailru-as	1.0	31133	MF-MGSM-AS	1.0
42448	ERA-AS	1.0	20485	TRANSTELECOM	1.0
13094	SFO-IX-AS	1.0	47541	VKONTAKTE-SPB-AS	1.0
47541	VKONTAKTE-SPB-AS	1.07	13238	YANDEX	1.05
13238	YANDEX	1.1	8470	MAcomnet	1.17
3216	SOVAM-AS	1.11	12389	ROSTELECOM-AS	1.19
48061	GPM-TECH-AS	1.11	41722	MIRAN-AS	1.2
31133	MF-MGSM-AS	1.11	8359	MTS	1.22
8359	MTS	1.12	60879	SYSTEMPROJECTS-AS	1.25
41268	LANTA-AS	1.13	41268	LANTA-AS	1.25
9049	ERTH-TRANSIT-AS	1.16	44020	CLN-AS	1.25
20485	TRANSTELECOM	1.18	29226	MASTERTEL-AS	1.25
29076	CITYTELECOM-AS	1.18	44943	RAMNET-AS	1.25
12389	ROSTELECOM-AS	1.23	12714	TI-AS	1.25
57629	IVI-RU	1.25	47764	mailru-as	1.25
48297	DOORHAN	1.25	44267	IESV	1.25
42632	MNOGOBYTE-AS	1.25	203730	SVIAZINVESTREGION	1.25
44020	CLN-AS	1.25	3216	SOVAM-AS	1.25
12668	MIRALOGIC-AS	1.25	24739	SEVEREN-TELECOM	1.29

Table 6. AS connectivity by the distance to the largest regional transit ISPs

What efforts could be taken in order to improve the overall connectivity and in turn stability, reliability and security of any country and Russia in particular? Here are just a few:

• Tax exemption and other benefits to local IX operators;
• Free or cheap land servitude for fiber optic communication lines construction;
• Trainings for technical staff in faraway regions, including workshops and tutorials on BGP best practices. RIPE NCC provides some of those for free, check the list.

Data presented in this article is an excerpt from the research conducted by Qrator Labs about the world’s second-largest regional Internet segment of Russia (colloquially recognized as “Runet”), based on open data collected and analyzed by the Radar project. The research in full is planned to be presented at the proposed workshop during the 10th Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum in July. Any feedback as well as requests for similar research for other countries and regions are welcome and could be sent to the e-mail: [email protected]