A Look At How Egypt Shut Down The Internet

from the a-few-phone-calls dept

Mon, Jan 31st 2011 9:46am — Mike Masnick

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.

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Filed Under: egypt, internet, shutdown

29 Comments

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Cowardly Anon, 31 Jan 2011 @ 9:57am

More like ISPs who are in the government's pocket that is a bit too centralized.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:02am

Most smaller countries have a limited number of ISPs and a limited number of income connections. Basically, they each hit their BGP and remove all routes, and within seconds, the outside internet no longer exists.

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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- Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:03am
  
  Re:
  If your government shuts down the internet, shut down your government.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:26am
    
    Re: Re:
    Why, because they took away your binky? grow up.
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    - DS, 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:39am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Yes, that's exactly it.
      
      /facepalm/
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    - Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:45am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Your irony is awesome, as always, TAM.
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    - TheStupidOne, 31 Jan 2011 @ 12:31pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Yes, because they took my binky. Binky of course refers to my only source of unfiltered news and communication. Also the medium through which billions of dollars is added to the GDP. And of course we can't forget that my binky is the fastest and most efficient method of organizing resistance against a government that is not in the best interest of the citizens. I love my binky
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  - Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 2:24pm
    
    Not well thought out
    Without the Internet, I can't get my work done - With all this free time on my hands, I might as well go join that protest outside.
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  - lux (profile), 1 Feb 2011 @ 2:23pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Here comes the coffeeshop rebellion!
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:08am

Graph would be more telling if you showed from say the 15th to the 30th. I suspect it would show a huge increase in traffic just before it was shut off, an indication that the net was used to incite the riots.
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- Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:14am
  
  Re:
  Oh no, people communicated! The horror.
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- Dan (profile), 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:15am
  
  Re:
  Following that logic, riots weren't possible before the internet. It was shut off to stop the REPORTING on the riots.
  
  I'm sure Obama is absolutely salivating knowing this is actally possible, along with a good number of Republicans.
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  - Benny6Toes (profile), 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:26am
    
    Re: Re:
    It wasn't just the reporting of the riots Mubarak's government was trying to stop. I'd say that wasn't even the primary purpose. The internet is was being used to organize and advertise the demonstrations so it got shut down. Preventing the internal reporting on the web was sort of a bonus (obviously the lack of internet connectivity hasn't stopped reporting).
    
    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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- Kevin (profile), 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:30am
  
  Re:
  Regardless of the riots that were to occur you could also surmise there was a rise in activity based on people simply trying to find out what is going on. People communicating with family, friends, governments, and businesses looking to get out ahead of what they thought (at the time) was a potential explosive situation. Not all of the increased activity could be directly linked to the riots that eventually/were happened/happening.
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cc (profile), 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:37am

I haven't looked at the details, but I recall reading that all of Egypt's infrastructure is owned by four companies. If you look closely at the diagram, you can see usage fall in steps (four of them, in fact) starting at around 4PM.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:51am

I wonder how much music sales went up during this period.
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- Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 11:58am
  
  Re:
  Do they sell commercial music in islamic countries?
  
  I thought they just keep repeating "alah oh akubar" or something.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 10:59am

"It looks like ISPs as a bottleneck may be yet another piece of internet infrastructure that's a bit too centralized."

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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- The eejit (profile), 31 Jan 2011 @ 11:26am
  
  Re:
  The point is that the vast majority of the infrastructure is owned by FOUR COMPANIES. Think about that for a second.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 12:19pm
    
    Re: Re:
    The vast majority of the internet infrastructure for a smallish country was run by four companies. Big freaking deal. That isn't centralized.
    
    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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    - Jay (profile), 31 Jan 2011 @ 12:51pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Tell ya what, how about you read it yourself?
      
      http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/how-egypt-or-how-your-government-could- shut-down-the-internet.ars
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      - Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 2:37pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Nothing we didn't know in that post. It still doesn't show anything as centralized. Without their existing laws to allow them to do it, it would have been close to impossible.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 11:08am

And some how the riots are still raging on.

Heck some people even manage to get online.
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- Jay (profile), 31 Jan 2011 @ 12:55pm
  
  Re:
  They are using dialup. Never underestimate the resourcefulness of the human spirit.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 12:00pm

If they make us...
...we will rebuild it. And we can. The genie ain't going back in the bottle.

What's more, if they make us do it, THEY won't be invited.
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Another Anonymous Poster, 31 Jan 2011 @ 1:34pm

Government Controlled Internet
Do you honestly believe that various government agencies don't already effectively control the Internet in the US? The Patriot Act and other laws pretty much put every ISP/Telcom under their jurisdiction/control. Maybe facilitating snooping and providing historical data is as far as they are going today, but I imagine that most ISPs would pull the plug if faced with a government order in the guise of national security.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 1:41pm

In Soviet Russia Internet does not shut down government, government shut down Internet.
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Chuck Money, 31 Jan 2011 @ 5:35pm

Competition, anyone?
Well, if you ever need an argument in favor of having multiple, reasonable ISP choices in the same market, here you have it. If the US Government decides to cry "patriot act" or "terrorism" and shut down the internet in the US, what do they really have to do? Well...call Comcast, AT&T, HughesNet, Charter, and about 5 other ISPs and bingo, the internet is 95% offline. I mean, the moment they start screaming "national security" at a CIO at 3AM and he can't get the company's CEO on the phone to argue/bribe/whatever the NSA/CIA/FBI/etc then it's all over, the internet is freaking gone. This is the #1 reason there should NEVER be ANY monopoly in ANY industry, PERIOD. If nothing else, having a large number of small companies increases the odds that the government can't shut down or take over all of it.

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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- Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2011 @ 6:05pm
  
  Re: Competition, anyone?
  Chuck, as soon as an armed revolution starts in the US, you can expect the internet to go down. Until then, adjust your tin foil hat and have a nice day.
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