Communications from DeitY regarding blocking of Traffic emanating from IP addresses from States assessed to be sensitive in the current prevailing situation
(DS Cell)
No.813-7/25/2011-DS
Subject: Communications from DeitY regarding blocking of Traffic emanating from IP addresses from States assessed to be sensitive in the current prevailing situation.
Notes on pre pages (24/N to 25/N) may kindly seen.
PUC at (70/C) is a communications [D.O No - 6(30)/2012-CLFE dated 23/08/2012] from Secretary, Department of Electronics & Information Technology. It has been communicated that Ministry of Home Affairs has sent an Office Memorandum No. II/21021/221/2012-IS-II/M dated 23.08.2012 (copy enclosed). MHA has requested that "Twitter Inc may be directed to all traffic emanating from IP addresses in the States assessed by the Central Intelligence Agencies to be sensitive in the current prevailing situation viz. Kerala, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra. Karnataka, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh by 6.00 PM today. In case of non- compliance of this geographical specific blocking which flows from sensitive assessment of prevailing situation, then Twitter may be blocked on All India level".
2. Department of Telecom has been requested to consider the technical feasibility of the request of MHA and advice the DIT accordingly. In this regard feedbacks have been collected from the major service providers on the following issues:
(i) allocation of State-wise IP address
(ii) technical feasibility of specific area wise /state wise blocking of website/URL.
Feedbacks received from Tata Communications, (67/C & 73/C) Bharti
Airtel (68/C & 77/C), BSNL (75/C), Reliance Communications (72/C),
IDEA (76/C) & ISPAI (74/C). These comments are compiled as below
| Sr. | Name of the company | Comments on state-wise IP address allocation & specific area wise /state-wise blocking of website/URL. |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tata Communications |
TCL does not allocate IP addresses to its customers on a state-wise basis and there is no IP Address range specific to any of the States of India. Specific area wise /state wise blocking of website /URL is technically not feasible. |
| 2 | BSNL | IP addresses in the BSNL Network is as below. 1) Leased line:- On national Basis 2) Wimax/CDMA.GSM - on Zonal Basis 3) ADSL Broadband :- On Circle basis. |
| 3 | M/s Bharti Airtel |
IP addresses are allocated internally hubwise. In mobile network, we have 7 hubs and the IP address pools are internally allocated to different hubs. The blocking of website/ URL can be done at the gateway only as: |
| 4 | M/s Reliance Communications | IP addresses are not allotted Statewise. The blocking has been implemented at the Gateway locations. Hence specific area wise /' stale wise blocking of website / URL is not possible. |
| 5 | M/s Idea | Currently our ISP operation can't block region wise as we give bulk service to GGSN and are in a way blind to the traffic distribution after GGSN. We can only block sites/links at gateway level which will affect the complete GGSN. |
| 6 | Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) |
We would like to inform that it is technically not feasible to block website/URL area wise / state wise. |
With reference to aforesaid feedbacks from Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) and major Internet Service Providers it has come out that in the present scenario Internet Service Providers having majority of Internet subscribers have not allocated IP addresses area wise /state-wise and it would not be possible for them at present to carry out specific area wise /slate-wise blocking of website/URL.
3. In view of above it is proposed to reply to Secretary, DeitY as per draft placed at (.l?/C).
Put up for kind considerations and approval please.
(Subodh Saxena)
Dir.(DS-II)
DDG(DS)
Member (T)
