A Look At How Egypt Shut Down The Internet
from the a-few-phone-calls dept
With Egypt taking the extreme step of shutting down the internet last week, a lot of people started wondering just how does a country go about doing that. According to a report by Ryan Singel at Wired, the answer appears to be with a series of phone calls to ISPs. Wired published this telling image from Arbor Networks, that shows just how dramatic the cut off was:
The report notes that while there isn't anything like a big red "stop the internet" button, and there are a variety of different internet providers, it's still possible to shut them all down with just a few phone calls. And you can kind of see that in the fact that the turn off didn't all happen exactly at once, but there were a series of drops over the course of a few hours, leading up to that big drop off. The report does note that at least one ISP, Noor, appears to still be operating, which appears to represent that tiny bit of blue at the bottom of the chart.
It looks like ISPs as a bottleneck may be yet another piece of internet infrastructure that's a bit too centralized.

It looks like ISPs as a bottleneck may be yet another piece of internet infrastructure that's a bit too centralized.
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I would not be shocked to see more and more governments work to get control of the internet connectivity, as it is a powerful tool. Islamic countries are pretty agressive about blocking certain things on the internet, which means there is already good communication between authorities and the ISPs.
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I'm sure Obama is absolutely salivating knowing this is actally possible, along with a good number of Republicans.
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As for Obama and a good number of Republicans...really? You think they're salivating over this? You didn't think they knew this was possible to begin with after the telcos rolled over on warrantless wiretaps, etc.?
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/facepalm/
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This sentence makes absolutely no sense. Clearly, you understood that it was MANY ISPs, as you stated it yourself. How could they possibly be more decentralized? It's the country's LAW that made them able to shut down "the internet" not the fact that anything was centralized. Even if there were 200 000 ISPs, it would have only taken a few more phonecalls and would have not prevented anything.
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Heck some people even manage to get online.
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I thought they just keep repeating "alah oh akubar" or something.
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If they make us...
What's more, if they make us do it, THEY won't be invited.
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That is a Mike Masnick "line", something to refer to later. "We already showed how the internet is too centralized".
It's FUD.
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/how-egypt-or-how-your-government-could- shut-down-the-internet.ars
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Government Controlled Internet
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Not well thought out
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Competition, anyone?
I'd vote for a law stating that no company may ever possess more than 10% of any market, or if it does, it must pay every single penny of profit it makes above 10% of the market to the government as taxes. Under this model, small businesses would thrive (of course, in return, they'd pay MUCH lower taxes) and large corporations woudl be forced to pay their fair share. No loopholes, no write-offs, nothing. If you own more than 10% of your market, fine, but you can't profit from it, period.
A bit extreme? Maybe, but so is picking up the phone for 5 minutes and shutting down the whole damn internet!
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Re: Competition, anyone?
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