How Russia got connected

On the dawn of the Russian networks the majority of internet-users were representatives of scientific and academic institutions. This explains limited access for outside users. But there were also technical difficulties to develop the Russian Internet network – there was no general encoding standard for the Cyrillic language and programmers couldn’t simply understand each other.

“There were many encodings for different operating systems, even for different organizations”, remembers prominent IT-expert Anton Nosik in interview with Russia’s Gazeta newspaper. “That’s why uniting all Russian-speaking users in April 1994 was out of the question”.

Maksim Moshkov

The first online source, available to the wider public, was the online “Library of Maksim Moshkov” launched in December 1994 by a young scientist, Maksim Moshkov. Now the website www.lib.ru is the most full online literature service and is one of the most visited on the Russian Internet.

But what happened to bring all Russian-speaking networks with different encoding languages to a common ground? Anton Nosik says it all goes down to Microsoft father, Bill Gates:

“The Real Runet emerged out of the barbarous policy of Bill Gates, who imposed his Windows 95 and forced everyone to use its encoding for Cyrillic. On the basis of this encoding people were able to write and understand each other”, says Nosik.

The atmosphere in early networks was more friendly and people were kinder, remembers Russia’s fantasy writer, Sergey Lukyanenko in an interview with Gazeta:

“The network was a place for people in one way or another associated with computers. There were no “common users” – even to set up a necessary programme needed specific skills. Of course there were pranksters and even hooligans. But people in the majority were more intellectual in conversations”, remembers the writer. “Before the network it was a haven for more calm people, maybe because they were roughly of the same age and education”, suggests Sergey Lukyanenko.

High speed to success

The development of Runet gathered pace and by the year 1998 it had become an active area for businessmen. By 2004 some 13% of the Russian population were active users of the Internet. In September 2007 the millionth domain in Runet was registered and just six months later, in March 2009 the number doubled.

Today Russia stands 6-7 in rankings by number of national domains registered and Runet is among the most dynamically developing segments of the World Wide Web after China.

Russian IT professionals are now working on registering national domains in Cyrillic which will look like an abbreviation from the Russian Federation.

This will allow users to type web addresses in Cyrillic. It has already been approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The detailed procedure for registering such domain should be ready by summer 2009, say representatives of RU-Center, which will coordinate the domain. Russian IT representatives and ICANN are due to meet at the end of April for further negotiations on creating the first non-Latin domain.

Ksenia Belmessova, RT