BlackTerrel
01-28-2011, 07:55 PM
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2011/01/how_egypt_fell_off_the_interne.html
Renesys, an internet security firm based in Manchester, N.H., has given its commentary on how Egypt managed to shut down all Internet access in the country.
Essentially, post author Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer and a co-founder of Renesys, told the Associated Press, Egypt is one of the few countries with so much control over its service providers that it was able to hit a virtual kill switch on the country's access to the Internet.
In a post on the Renesys site from around 7 p.m. Thursday night, the company observed that nearly all of the routes to Egypt were simultaneously withdrawn, starting at about 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Thursday night and 12:34 a.m. in Egypt. "Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn," the company wrote, "leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers."
This is completely unprecedented, according to Renesys. While other countries such as Tunisia and Iran have blocked parts of the Internet or manipulated access to make it very slow, he wrote that "the Egyptian government's actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map." The only part of Egypt's Internet presence that had not been affected, he noted, was the 83 live routes of the Noor Group, which holds one of IP addresses for the Egyptian Stock Exchange, which is still accessible. Cowie said this was excellent planning on behalf of the Stock Exchange's IT staff and posits the theory that the Egyptian government let the group continue so that the markets could open next week.
Cowie said that such a thing could not happen in U.S., as internet connectivity is spread between hundreds, possibly thousands, of different places. "We have enough Internet here that we can have our own Internet," he told the AP. "If you cut it off, that leads to a philosophical question: Who got cut off from the Internet, us or the rest of the world?"
Not if Joe Lieberman gets his wish...
Renesys, an internet security firm based in Manchester, N.H., has given its commentary on how Egypt managed to shut down all Internet access in the country.
Essentially, post author Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer and a co-founder of Renesys, told the Associated Press, Egypt is one of the few countries with so much control over its service providers that it was able to hit a virtual kill switch on the country's access to the Internet.
In a post on the Renesys site from around 7 p.m. Thursday night, the company observed that nearly all of the routes to Egypt were simultaneously withdrawn, starting at about 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Thursday night and 12:34 a.m. in Egypt. "Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn," the company wrote, "leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers."
This is completely unprecedented, according to Renesys. While other countries such as Tunisia and Iran have blocked parts of the Internet or manipulated access to make it very slow, he wrote that "the Egyptian government's actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map." The only part of Egypt's Internet presence that had not been affected, he noted, was the 83 live routes of the Noor Group, which holds one of IP addresses for the Egyptian Stock Exchange, which is still accessible. Cowie said this was excellent planning on behalf of the Stock Exchange's IT staff and posits the theory that the Egyptian government let the group continue so that the markets could open next week.
Cowie said that such a thing could not happen in U.S., as internet connectivity is spread between hundreds, possibly thousands, of different places. "We have enough Internet here that we can have our own Internet," he told the AP. "If you cut it off, that leads to a philosophical question: Who got cut off from the Internet, us or the rest of the world?"
Not if Joe Lieberman gets his wish...