Post by Deleted on May 6, 2014 14:28:42 GMT -5
I often wondered about that.
To silence dissidents, the Egyptian government made a move Jan. 28 that has no precedent: It turned off the Internet nationwide. How did they do it — and could the same thing happen here?
According to David Clark, an MIT computer scientist whose research focuses on Internet architecture and development, a government's ability to control the Internet depends on its control of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the private sector companies that grant Internet access to customers.
"ISPs have direct control of the Internet, so what happens in any country depends on the control that the state has over those ISPs," Clark told Life's Little Mysteries in an e-mail. "Some countries regulate the ISPs much more heavily. China has in the past 'turned off' the Internet in various regions."
When a government orders the ISP to disable service, Clark explained, "they have lots of ways of doing it technically. They could power down devices (which is sort of like unplugging things), or change the routing tables (which is more like a "digital kill," and can serve to allow selective services to stay up)."
Continue reading here:
www.livescience.com/32965-how-do-you-shut-down-the-internet-whole-country.html
According to David Clark, an MIT computer scientist whose research focuses on Internet architecture and development, a government's ability to control the Internet depends on its control of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the private sector companies that grant Internet access to customers.
"ISPs have direct control of the Internet, so what happens in any country depends on the control that the state has over those ISPs," Clark told Life's Little Mysteries in an e-mail. "Some countries regulate the ISPs much more heavily. China has in the past 'turned off' the Internet in various regions."
When a government orders the ISP to disable service, Clark explained, "they have lots of ways of doing it technically. They could power down devices (which is sort of like unplugging things), or change the routing tables (which is more like a "digital kill," and can serve to allow selective services to stay up)."
Continue reading here:
www.livescience.com/32965-how-do-you-shut-down-the-internet-whole-country.html
