For the second day, news has been swirling in the news feeds about the fact that Moscow may leave Kyivans without the Internet and that there will be no connection in the winter.
I see that there is often some complete trash being spread. Let's figure out step by step what is true and what is a lie.
For the second day, news has been swirling in the news feeds about the fact that Moscow may leave Kyivans without the Internet and that there will be no connection in the winter.
I see that there is often some complete trash being spread. Let's figure out step by step what is true and what is a lie.
Let's start with what you need to understand: there is a very different telecom infrastructure that is affected. You shouldn't perceive it as a single whole, because the tasks of each link of this infrastructure are different, as is the level of duplication and redundancy of systems - it varies greatly.
First, there are data centers where data from various applications and services that you use every day is stored and processed. These are large sites where servers are located in special racks that ensure the operation of the Ukrainian cloud.
As we know, several Kyiv data centers have been hit. But this does not mean that all data from Ukrainian applications has been destroyed. In most cases, data from professional Internet services is stored in different clouds (i.e. physically “lies” in different data centers) in Ukraine and abroad.
Many data of Ukrainian Internet services are stored in global clouds AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, etc. This means that “mirrors” or even master copies of the services are physically located somewhere in a data center in Poland, Lithuania, Germany, or another reliable location. No shaheeds fly there (yet).
If one of the data centers is damaged, the data is loaded from another site. And this is imperceptible to the user. Even if you access a service that is stored in Frankfurt, you will not experience a signal delay in the vast majority of cases.
Of course, there are exceptions. For example, after the destruction of the oldest Ukrainian data center Mirohost, access to some old forums that were stored there and, most likely, were not backed up, was physically lost.
But such cases are rare.
And, of course, the heavier the files, the more efficient it is to store them as close to the users as possible. For example, large videos or games. But there are already services in the world that are directly engaged in delivering heavy content on the Internet without critical signal delay. And this whole system has long been well calculated and works stably.
The second is the communication hubs of Internet providers. In Kyiv, there are quite a few relatively small companies that provide Internet access to apartments.
And so, if a rocket launcher hits this district node, the internet may disappear until the technicians connect backup or partner equipment (if any).
In Kyiv's entrances, as a rule, there are three to five different Internet providers. Each of them is connected to its own communication node. If you get into one node, the Internet will still flow from the other.
Third, there are communication nodes of large telecom companies: Kyivstar, Ukrtelecom, Vodafone, etc. This infrastructure is reserved. Twice, or even three times. The arrival of the shaheed will, of course, cause trouble for employees of telecom companies, but they will not stop providing you with services. This is calculated.
Fourth, there are base stations of mobile operators that directly distribute mobile Internet to all of us. And most likely, nothing critical will happen to them. This is a bad, ineffective goal. There are more than 10,000 stations in Kyiv alone. These are small, hard-to-reach objects. And even if 100 of them fail, it will hardly affect the operation of mobile Internet in the capital as a whole.
But yes, when you are using mobile internet during a blackout or during a temporary outage of your home internet provider, the quality of the connection can deteriorate significantly (even if all 5 LTE bars are on the smartphone screen). This does not mean that the mobile operator's base station is not working well. It means that at a certain time it is simply overloaded with requests for connection and file downloads (from people who did not take care of their internet backups in time).
Fifth. There are also traffic exchange points. These are quite painful places in terms of potential arrivals. These exchange points often house the equipment of many Internet providers and Internet services, and they serve as a kind of Internet bridge between Ukrainian networks (and their users).
But if you arrive at such a point, it doesn't mean that you won't have internet access now. Because there are other points, both in Ukraine and giant traffic exchange points in the world, through which your traffic will now flow.
We need to understand the main thing: there is no such single or main communication hub in Ukraine, there are not even several main hubs.
The architecture of the Internet is distributed, highly fragmented. That's why it's so difficult to block access to a resource at the state level, unless you live in North Korea, of course.
Therefore, there is less panic, more trust in our telecom specialists. They are currently working hard on the stability of your data and your connections. They are the best in the world, believe me. I have been communicating with them for 20 years. Everything is fine with the Internet. And it will be fine. And no one can do anything about it. Even within themselves, they cannot fully control it.
And now a few tips.
1. If you work on the Internet and an outage is critical for you, try connecting a backup home provider. Yes, it's an extra 300–500 UAH per month. But this way you are guaranteed to have work.
2. If there is an opportunity to buy and connect Starlink, this will be the best backup.
3. Don't expect to sit and work on 4G. The base station simply won't be able to reach everyone. Don't have any illusions.
