Syria blackout could happen elsewhere

Dylan Bushell-Embling
03 Dec 2012
00:00

Syria's brief internet blackout is notable both for the extent of the disruption and the risk of similar disruptions occurring in other nations, according to Renesys.

The internet analytics company had been monitoring the disruption on Thursday and Friday, and providing updates on its blog. By 01:00 GMT on Friday, all networks belonging to Syria were down, Renesys said.

The company also tracked the restoration of Syrian internet services on Saturday, noting that services were resumed almost as “quickly and neatly” as the outage itself.

The cause of the blackout is unknown, but many pundits are speculating that the Syrian government flipped an internet “kill switch,” similar to the Egyptian internet shutdown experiment early last year.

In a separate blog post, Renesys co-founder and CTO Jim Cowie addressed the question of how likely a total internet blackout would be in other countries under extreme circumstances.

Cowie points out that decentralization and diversity of routes are key to maintaining the robustness and survival of the internet, but that in some countries international access to telecom services is heavily regulated, with only one or two companies licensed to carry traffic internationally.

“Under those circumstances, it's almost trivial for a government to issue an order that would take down the internet. Make a few phone calls, or turn off power in a couple of central facilities, and you've (legally) disconnected the domestic internet from the global internet,” Cowie said.

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