How to Shut Down the Internet

[TalkingDog]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/how-egypt-or-how-your-government-could-shut-down-the-internet.ars

The only thing we know for sure is that quite suddenly, almost all the Egyptian IP address ranges fell off the 'Net, as reported by Renesys. The Renesys post talks about BGP prefixes disappearing. That could be either cause or effect. A prefix is simply BGP-talk for a range of IP addresses. For instance, the range 192.0.2.0-192.0.2.255 is the prefix 192.0.2/24. The number after the slash indicates how many bits are part of the prefix. The remaining bits are to be filled in later. BGP, the Border Gateway Protocol, is a routing protocol that is used between the routers on either side of the border between two ISPs—"gateway" is an old-fashioned word for "router."


snip:
Like in Egypt, in Europe almost all interconnection happens in the capitals of the countries involved. Not so in the US: because the country is so large, and traffic volumes are so high, large networks may interconnect in as many as 20 cities. Numerous intercontinental sea cables land in the Boston, New York, Washington DC, Miami, Los Angeles, and Seattle regions. So in Egypt or many medium-sized countries, killing the connections between ISPs wouldn't be too hard. In the US, this would be quite difficult.

Assuming someone in high places has an Internet kill switch, shutting down just the international connections would require a lot of manual work, or the preexistence of an infrastructure that can make this happen automatically through management protocols. Of course such a system would never be triggered by accident or by a disgruntled employee.



I guess if there is a bright side for us it's that our system is non-centralized and more difficult to take down without some real effort.

[On the Road]

1. dupe

[On the Road]

2. You Just Flip That Switch on the Side

and this time, don't turn it back on

[Whoa_Nelly]

3. It comes down to this...

shut down the Internet,expect people in the streets. There is no option in being heard when the voice is strong.

[Whoa_Nelly]

4. Shutting down communication via electronic means

is not shutting down communication

[cutlassmama]

5. People here need to get landline phones. They cut off internet

and cell phones, but not landlines.