[rdl]

Don't underestimate Iran. They aren't quite the US or Japan, but ahead of any middle eastern non Israel nation, probably ahead of India in many ways, and on par with Brazil or Spain or maybe Italy in terms of domestic engineering talent and ability.

[jim_kaiser]

On the other hand, they are not geniuses to solve the problems of internet security once and for all. All they might manage to do is stop free flow of information into and out of the country. The "Iron curtain" never helped anyone.

To use Huawei's equipment to achieve their national security needs is just naive. You might as well handover your country's internet infrastructure to China itself.

[EDIT: Added some links regarding Huawei (Whether the allegations are true or not, they are controversial and risky to trust):

http://www.truthalliance.net/Archive/News/tabid/67/ID/9347/C...

http://www.telecomstechnews.com/news/2012/sep/14/are-foreign...

]

[rdl]

DoD runs multiple separate versions of the Internet (I'd call them Internets vs. just a big intranet due to size and scope); NIPRnet for unclassified and SIPRnet for Secret are the two big ones. It's totally reasonable for Iran to do something at that level.

Huawei probably won't help the USG vs. Iran, so using Huawei for this is a better choice than using Cisco, actually.

[zingahgud]

I fear I was misunderstood. What made me laugh was the thought that the internet is a sort of wild west of ideologies and Iran, from what little I know, is a very tightly controlled ideological context. I did not even read the article. It's just the title that struck me as paradoxical. "Internet" == uncontrollable, Iran == tight control, "Internet" + Iran == WTF? Hope that makes sense.

I realise internet here probably just means a research network. I have tremendous respect for the Iranian people and certainly their computer professionals. From what little I've seen they are very bright. As for comparisons in terms of engineering talent I was thinking almost on par with Russia. If I'm way off the mark it just shows how little I know. Pay no mind.

[borplk]

I know a fair bit about this.

It's only there to restrict people's access to uncensored information. Cyberattack etc is just an excuse to make people think it's something for their own good.

Since they can tightly control it and it is a national network, they will offer very fast speeds with attractive prices, the actual internet is terribly expensive and incredibly slow, then they'll slowly expand from there, similar to china, they will make their own versions of Twitter and Facebook and Gmail and offer those at very cheap prices with great speed.

Banks and all government organisations are soon going to require people to use a 'national email'. If your emails is @gmail.com they'll simply refuse it and will ask you to open an account on this new email site.

Once it gains some momentum it'll snowball from there. Those who only want to send an email and send a couple of messages to their friends will prefer the national network because it is much cheaper and a lot faster.

Having said that, the whole thing is destined to fail. People will find ways to fight it. At this point there's not enough information about the network architecture but most probably there will be a large pool of computers with high speed and unrestricted access to the internet as part of this network.

They will be the gateways to the internet. For example an Iranian bank will transfer its 'netbank' to the national network. But the server that is hosting this netbank still needs the internet to operate so that server will be connected to the internet with a high quality link.

There's a possibility that people will manage to gain access to these nodes and use it as a proxy to get high speed internet. Obviously if someone manages to do that they'll probably try to stick to it as long as they can so it wont bring the internet to everybody.

The network is being laid out from next week all across the country. We'll see.

[collinanderson]

> Banks and all government organisations are soon going to require people to use a 'national email'. If your emails is @gmail.com they'll simply refuse it and will ask you to open an account on this new email site.

True, that was a policy statement from Taghipour, however my impression is that the resistance from the banking industry and Majles led to the mandate being scrapped. However, the overall point that Iran has a civil society around the Internet is valid and the reason I am pushing out the paper quickly.

Here is a link on banking: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...

[esolyt]

Exactly. Using science and technology to restrict access to more science and technology is not only pathetic, but also funny.

[zingahgud]

Whew. I was afraid no one else saw the humor in that headline.