QuoteAndrei Semerikov, general director of a Russian service provider called Er Telecom, said Russia's ministry of communications and Roskomnadzor, the national internet regulator, ordered communications hubs run by the main Russian internet providers to block traffic to foreign communications channels by using a traffic control system called DPI.
The objective was to see whether the Runet – the informal name for the Russian internet – could continue to function in isolation from the global internet.
The experiment, which took place in spring this year, failed because thousands of smaller service providers, which Roskomnadzor has little control over, continued to pass information out of the country, Mr Semerikov said.
source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11934411/Russia-tried-to-cut-off-World-Wide-Web.html