They say that Internet unites people, which is difficult to argue\u00a0against. \u00a0Users of the Internet\u00a0can call their relatives in Europe, find a groupmate from another state in Facebook or apply for an exotic job somewhere on Cayman Islands \u2013 all at any time of the day. It sometimes seems that borders between countries and regions are slowly\u00a0dissolving.<\/p>\n
The notion of online freedom and independence on the Internet started to show signs of stress and decay over a decade ago. It\u2019s also possible that the World Wide Web will come apart<\/a> and we all will have a \u2018Splinternet\u2019 instead of Internet. This unusual name is used to denominate a number of local area networks, divided by the geographical borders of different countries and regulated by local laws.<\/p>\n Even now you can find enough examples of how the Splinternet may look. It\u2019s possible due to a number of reasons. \u00a0These reasons vary from political right through to geographical. \u00a0Below, we\u2019ll take a look at some of the main reasons behind the slow fracturing of the WWW.<\/p>\n To see the Internet under strict governmental control you have to go to China. If you want to access Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, read blogs running on Blogspot and WordPress or watch a video on Vimeo, you\u2019ll have to bypass the great firewall of China. Chinese people do have partial access to Wikipedia however, the articles that they\u2019re not able to see\u00a0are politically sensitive in China.<\/p>\n https:\/\/twitter.com\/Socialist_Times\/status\/728749776854986752<\/p>\n There are local analogues for all these websites. Those few people who want to reach beyond the firewall and access original web portals have to use a VPN<\/a>. Usually the Chinese search for Facebook or YouTube only if they have used them before. And this primarily applies to the people who studied abroad, have foreign friends and relatives, those who need these sites for work as English tutors or software developers. Lots of Chinese people say that the nationwide firewall is quite useful and the majority of Chinese people are not ready to surf the Internet unprotected.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/_bOYwxOiWN\/<\/p>\n However, one problem with using VPN\u2019s in China is speed. \u00a0Virtual Private Networks in China can be very slow. To a large extend this sloth-like pace can be explained by the fact that there are only three\u00a0gateways<\/a>, which can let users out to the global web. They are located northward, near Beijing, in the centre of the country in Shanghai and southward, in Guangzhou. As traffic passes through these gateways, packets are \u201cmirrored\u201d and monitored by the government<\/a>, which also slows the process down. However slow this Internet is,\u00a0it pales in significance to the North Korean \u2018internet.\u2019<\/p>\n A select few\u00a0North Korean citizens have special access to the North Korean internet, however using the term \u201cinternet\u201d is used loosely. They have a local network, which is proudly named Kwangmyong (it can be translated as \u201cbright\u201d) and it has no physical connection to the World Wide Web.<\/p>\n The only way to access Kwangmyong is to use dial-up lines. It is estimated<\/a> that there are no more than a few thousand sites on the intranet, and their content is created by the Korean Computer Centre, which translates selected scientific articles form the Internet adding some political propaganda. Kwangmyong is officially free to use, but very few people can access it due to governmental restrictions and simply because computers are too pricy for an average North Korean citizen that earns about $30 per month<\/a>. As for the World Wide Web, only embassies, chosen government officials and special services can access Internet.<\/p>\n #Sony<\/a> Pictures hack: the whole story http:\/\/t.co\/3Z995XfDNf<\/a> via @engadget<\/a> featuring Kaspersky's @K_Sec<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Kaspersky (@kaspersky) December 12, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe Great Wall of China 2.0<\/h3>\n
North Korea: just a humble LAN-party<\/h3>\n
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