Egyptian Gov't's Attempt to Disconnect the Internet

[Perknose]

Some interesting details:

A near-wholesale disconnect of the Internet in Egypt persisted over the weekend as protesters continued to challenge the three-decade rule of President Hosni Mubarak.

Most Egyptian Internet service providers shut off connectivity around the same time during the evening of Jan. 27 (see graph), with independent estimates of Egyptian Internet availability ranging by 9 percent to 7 percent of the norm. Apparently unaffected by the officially-ordered shutdown is Egyptian ISP Noor Group, which accounts for just 8 percent of normal Egyptian ISP traffic according to one estimate, but counts among its customers the Egyptian stock exchange and a host of transnational companies, including FedEx, Toyota and Coca-Cola.

"This sequencing looks like people getting phone calls, one at a time, telling them to take themselves off the air," said James Cowie, chief technology officer of Manchester, N.H.-based Renesys, an Internet traffic monitoring firm. "Not an automated system that takes all providers down at once; instead, the incumbent leads and other providers follow meekly one by one until Egypt is silenced,' he said on the company's blog.

Roughly a quarter of nearly 80.5 million Egyptians use the Internet, according to figure of the CIA World Factbook.

Egyptians unable to access an Noor connection have nonetheless found ways to connect to the Internet through dial up connections via international calls, whether on a landline or through mobile phones. One website has put up instructions for using Bluetooth phones to connect to a remote ISP and Internet activists We Rebuild has posted a clutch of dial up numbers and logon information. An interactive map of Tweets from the Cairo region shows some activity (see below).

Mobile voice service, which the government ordered suspended shortly after the Internet, was apparently at least partially restored Saturday. London-based Vodafone said in a statement that it had been ordered to shut off its network by Egyptian authorities but had brought back voice connectivity on the morning of Jan. 29.

"It has been clear to us that there were no legal or practical options open to Vodafone, or any of the mobile operators in Egypt, but to comply with the demands of the authorities," the company added. Vodafone is one of three mobile operators in Egypt, according to the Financial Times.
Usage among Internet-connected Egyptians of traffic-anonymizing software Tor had spiked from fewer than 500 users on Jan. 24 to more than 2,500 on Jan. 27, according to Tor Project numbers. Before almost totally disconnecting the Internet, the Egyptian government had reportedly attempted to block social media sites including Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to prevent protesters from communicating amongst themselves.

Read more: Egyptian Internet remains mostly blocked - FierceGovernmentIT http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/s...m_medium=nl&utm_source=internal#ixzz1CdfR6uXw

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Even when a government is desperate to cut off access, work-arounds and loopholes -- the Noor Group ISP wasn't shut down, apparently because it serves their stock exchange and a host of major multinational companies -- abound.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Completely cripple the economy and all hell will break loose.

At this point; there may be a way to salvage the situation without compeltely destroying the country.

To who's benefit, that does not matter - the existing governmnet is not going into scorched earth mode at this point!

 

[nageov3t]

it just occurred to me that Mark Zuckerburg has done more to promote world peace and freedom than Barack Obama.

 

[EagleKeeper]

it just occurred to me that Mark Zuckerburg has done more to promote world peace and freedom than Barack Obama.

One is a self serving politician; the other is a business man tyring to build something.

 

[Jaskalas]

Egyptian Gov't's Attempt to Disconnect the Internet

Anyone else catch onto this parallel?

As Egypt goes offline US gets internet 'kill switch' bill ready

Our own people want to do the same to us here.

 

[spidey07]

Hang on...

(config)#router bgp 2016
(config-router)#no ip bgp nei 12.154.32.3
(config)#ip route 0/0 null0


kthanks, no intarweb for you!

 

[blackangst1]

Hang on...

(config)#router bgp 2016
(config-router)#no ip bgp nei 12.154.32.3
(config)#ip route 0/0 null0


kthanks, no intarweb for you!

lol

 

[HomerJS]

One is a self serving politician; the other is a business man tyring to build something.

Let's not get into the deification of MZ. He put together a web site so guys could get laid.

It just happened to pay off.

 

[JSt0rm]

Hang on...

(config)#router bgp 2016
(config-router)#no ip bgp nei 12.154.32.3
(config)#ip route 0/0 null0


kthanks, no intarweb for you!

wouldnt you need to do that in millions of locations?

 

[spidey07]

wouldnt you need to do that in millions of locations?

No. Only on the big exchange points in Egypt. I guessed on AS# and was just trying to be funny. The graph and "you can see the calls being made" made me think just how easy it would be to shut it all down within a certain AS. There are certain entry/exit points for a particular AS and there aren't very many of them for a routing domain, shutting those down, shutting any routing across that AS means...

you're done. It's extremely easy to do it. Just stop exchanging routes with your neighbors. Even for a very largish AS it's only 100+ major peers, not millions.

 

[Perknose]

The last functioning ISP, the Noor network, which was kept open because it served the stock exchange and major internationals, shut down yesterday.

spidey is right about the relatively few portals that connect an ISP with the rest of the web, and the resultant ease of severing all connection. It was alluded to in the article I quoted in the OP. Here that is again:

"This sequencing looks like people getting phone calls, one at a time, telling them to take themselves off the air," said James Cowie, chief technology officer of Manchester, N.H.-based Renesys, an Internet traffic monitoring firm. "Not an automated system that takes all providers down at once; instead, the incumbent leads and other providers follow meekly one by one until Egypt is silenced,' he said on the company's blog.

Also, it appears that, behind the scenes the Mubarak regime has been actively trying to block all transportation routes into Cairo, in order to prevent outliers from joining the Cairo demonstrations.

With little regard, protesters defied a curfew that has become a joke to residents here and overcame attempts by the government to keep protesters away by closing roads, suspending train service and shutting down public transportation to Cairo. Some walked miles to the square, whose name means “liberation.” Others woke up there in the muddy patches where they had slept for days.

It's probably as far as the government dares go. It will not be enough.

This announcement yesterday was the regime's death knell:

The week-old uprising here entered a new stage about 9 p.m. on Monday when a uniformed military spokesman declared on state television that “the armed forces will not resort to use of force against our great people.” Addressing the throngs who took to the streets, he declared that the military understood “the legitimacy of your demands” and “affirms that freedom of expression through peaceful means is guaranteed to everybody.”

 

[tweaker2]

Joe Goebbels lives on......and on.......and on.....an...*click*