Egyptian Government Orders ISPs to Switch Off
The Egyptian government made headlines this week for blocking certain social networking sites. Now it appears as though the country is attempting to switch off the internet altogether.
Earlier this week, in an effort to crack down on protests, Egypt cut off access to Twitter, Facebook and, at one point, Google. Now, it seems the country has decided to completely ‘switch off’ the Internet by asking services providers to shut down all international connections to the Web.
Renesys reports that though critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now, Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are off the air.
“At 22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet's global routing table,” writes James Cowie.
“Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers,” he continued, adding, “Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.”
The only company with a working connection is Noor Group. Renesys says it still has 83 out of 83 live routes to its Egyptian customers, and notes that the Egyption Stock Exchange is at a Noor address.
Read more from Renesys here.
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I was wondering if Tom's was gonna cover this
Who knew the new-world version of tear gas would be switching off ISPs...
Judging by whats on the news, I doubt this will stop protests. If anything it'll make them stronger, just maybe a little less organized.
yea, that will stop it. or instead more people will be angry and more people will protest and riot, only this time is will be EVERYWHERE instead of organized in one place.
That would suck big time, especially for anyone who games online or owns steam games/games that require always-on internet.
Just wait till latter this year as things continue to deteriorate world wide.
The Egyptian people have had enough. This will surely add some nitro to the protesting.
That would suck big time, especially for anyone who games online or owns steam games/games that require always-on internet.
i could see killing people a viable option for me if this happend to me.
Major Bummer!
One thing i keep thinking of is from the original (and to me, the only) Matrix, when Morpheus is captured and is being interrogated, Agent Smith tells him that humans are a plague, a cancer to the planet earth.... so yeah, we're a cancer, and we've multiplied and screwed our planet almost to breaking point.. and now that we're running out of food, natural resources, heating up the atmosphere, and now with the recent global crisis adding to the extremely large global unemployment and the large amount of poor people/countries, well, basically what i'm trying to say is,
the world's going to hell!
I got friend's in Egypt!
D:
If everyone is protesting the government should just absolve...
Hmmm let's see .0000000001% of porn sites are going to be off. Oh what will I dooo?
Man if this is China, I bet 99% of the people here will jump on and like omg fuxking Communist die already.
Talked about double standard.
Man if this is China, I bet 99% of the people here will jump on and like omg fuxking Communist die already. Talked about double standard.
there is a difference between a third world country we don't and do exploit. there is also fact that china is becoming a first world country, and probably will be one within my lifetime, we care more...
basically, egypt has bigger problems than no internet, and they are over all less hostile
And yet, they want us to move to cloud computing. Example one why this is a BAD idea.....
Tomshardware, you DO know that there's actually a "help" key on Amiga keyboards? And it's next to the delete key on top of the arrow keys.
I think if our government did that it would lead to a revolution.
For all the people who were for that net neutrality here in the US, THIS is the end result when you start letting the government take control of the internet.
A corporate controlled internet could never do this because of the money lost.
Net Neutrality would not let the government take control of the internet.
A corporation could shut down anything that it considered harmful to itself, just like a government. The difference is that corporations are private tyrannies, while the government is answerable, at least in small measure, to the people.
this really isnt going to help..It will probably make things worse from my point of view.
"Net Neutrality would not let the government take control of the internet."
No, but it would be a stone in the foundation for it. Just like the FCC and the radio industry. And if you don't believe the FCC reference, then tell that to people like Howard Stern who would get fined 5 grand for saying the phrase, "going to the bathroom"!
The radio, like TV, is divided into pieces, the vast majority of which are controlled by a small number of corporations. I'm less worried about silly things like restrictions on vulgarity than about the limitation of what is broadcast.
Dictatorship at its worse, God knows what is happening behind closed gates!
Jane,
Thank you for taking my post seriously or if you by chance happen to write this, thanks is given equally.
Mubarak had already decided to involve the army. At least 74 people have died since, says news sources.
This is exactly why we shouldn't support dictatorships. When you support one you basically screw the freedom of speech of millions and force them to go out rampaging on the streets when they're pushed to the corner, risking their lives.
Meanwhile their leaders oppress them and make you believe whatever they want to, because their people are too afraid to speak up.
You say this is due to a dictatorship but the exact same thing can happen under a democracy like Americas or any european.
They just pass some internet security law and the government can do anything
In an authoritarian country, shutting off the internet is as fast as a blink on an eye, but in the US, it will take forever.
so the problem with the country now is due to the internet. the economy is down because nobody is working anymore. they all doing facebook, twitter and writing comments on tom's.
World War III starting...
With internet on, some people will use tweeter to do things that the government don't like.
With Internet switch off, anybody will get very angry.
I would start a revolution after 2 seconds without my modem light's.
Mubarak had already decided to involve the army. At least 74 people have died since, says news sources.This is exactly why we shouldn't support dictatorships. When you support one you basically screw the freedom of speech of millions and force them to go out rampaging on the streets when they're pushed to the corner, risking their lives.Meanwhile their leaders oppress them and make you believe whatever they want to, because their people are too afraid to speak up.
I suppose that you know that USA supports this dictator.
USA even have a school of dictators; the School for the Americas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weste [...] ooperation
And USA government pursues the Human rigths activists:
http://www.soaw.org/component/cont [...] mains-open
http://www.soaw.org/