Russia's plans to disconnect from the Internet as part of its preparations for a cyberwar

Russia is planning to disconnect briefly from the Internet as part of its preparations to face a possible cyber war.

This exercise is scheduled to take place before April 1, although an exact date has not yet been established.

The test will make all the information exchanged by Russian citizens and organizations through computer networks stay within the country and not be "routed" internationally.

NATO and its allies have accused Moscow of regularly instigating cyber attacks and other interference, for which they have threatened Russia with sanctions that could limit Russian access to the network of networks.

And a bill ordering the necessary technological changes to be able to operate independently of the international network was already presented to the Russian parliament last year.

The project, called the National Digital Economy Program, requires Internet service providers in the country to ensure they can continue to operate if foreign powers try to isolate them.

Important interruption

The measures described in the law include the construction by Russia of its own version of the network's address system, known as DNS, so that it can work if links to internationally located servers are cut.

Currently, 12 organizations monitor the root servers for DNS and none of them are in Russia.

However, many copies of the main "address book" of the network already exist in Russia, suggesting that their network systems could continue to function even if a punitive action were taken to cut it.

The test is also expected to make internet service providers demonstrate that they can direct data to routing points controlled by the government.

These will filter the traffic so that the information shared by Russians reaches its destination while discarding that destined for computers abroad.

And the Russian government wants eventually all traffic to pass through these routing points.

It is believed that this is part of an effort to establish a system of online censorship similar to the one that already exists in China, which seeks to eliminate traffic prohibited by the government.

For now, the Russian government is financing the efforts of internet service providers to make the necessary infrastructure changes so that the redirection effort can be adequately tested.

And several Russian news organizations have reported that the country's Internet service providers support the bill's objectives but can not agree on how to get them.

In fact, many believe that the test will cause a "major disruption" of Russian Internet traffic, according to the ZDNet technology news website.