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Almost 90 percent of polling stations equipped with web cameras

Almost 90 percent of Russia's voting stations have been equipped with computer appliances to observe the presidential election

Photo ITAR-TASS

Photo ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, February 22 (Itar-Tass) —— Almost 90 percent of Russia's voting stations have been equipped with computer appliances to observe the presidential election, Deputy Minister of Communications Ilya Massukh said on Wednesday.

“Our progress in the project is rather successful, and local authorities support Rostelecom,” he said. “Today, we can say that we comply with the installation schedule, and we are close to 90 percent in the number of the installed computer appliances.”

Senior Vice President of Rostelecom Vaagn Martirosyan confirmed the company installed communication channels at 93 percent of the voting stations.

“I believe the work at practically 100 percent of the stations will be completed by February 25,” he said. The big test is due on February 26. Already now, specialists can trace the quality of the “picture” on-line from the stations equipped with cameras.

Martirosyan said that the company is testing resistance to hacker attacks of the webvybory2012.ru portal, which will broadcast the election on March 4.

“Yesterday, we tested resistance to DDoS-attacks, and today we have the traffic load tests,” he said. “We are sure that everything will be working smoothly.”

Massukh, in his turn, added that on the day of the election “destructive impacts from the territory of the Russian Federation will be traced, and it would be possible to see, where the attack is coming from.”

Massukh said that over 200,000 users registered at the broadcasts' portal, and the number of the preferred polling stations exceeded two million.

“We still have an opportunity to add to the traffic load, to locate the servers with other providers, so that their users do not overload Rostelecom’s network,” Massukh said.

Before March 3, 2012, users may register at the www.webvybory2012.ru and choose preferred polling stations. For the registration, a person may use existing registration at one of popular search or mail engines, or a registration with a social net, or just to give the e-mail address and to confirm the registration using the link sent in a message. After the registration, users choose voting stations at Russia’s interactive map and add them to the list of preferred broadcasts.

The portal will automatically start broadcasting from the polling stations on midnight of March 4 Moscow time and will stop it only after the calculations of the votes, signing and voicing of protocols are complete.

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