Computers & Electronics

No routes to Egypt ! Internet shut down

  • Last Updated:
  • Jan 28th, 2011 10:28 pm
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Deal Guru
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Feb 10, 2007
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No routes to Egypt ! Internet shut down

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/01/egy ... rnet.shtml

[QUOTE]Confirming what a few have reported this evening: in an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. Critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now. But every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world. Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, 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. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers. Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.

This is a completely different situation from the modest Internet manipulation that took place in Tunisia, where specific routes were blocked, or Iran, where the Internet stayed up in a rate-limited form designed to make Internet connectivity painfully slow. The Egyptian government's actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map.

What happens when you disconnect a modern economy and 80,000,000 people from the Internet? What will happen tomorrow, on the streets and in the credit markets? This has never happened before, and the unknowns are piling up. We will continue to dig into the event, and will update this story as we learn more. As Friday dawns in Cairo under this unprecedented communications blackout, keep the Egyptian people in your thoughts.

Update (3:06 UTC)

One of the very few exceptions to this block has been Noor Group (AS20928), which still has 83 out of 83 live routes to its Egyptian customers, with inbound transit from Telecom Italia as usual. Why was Noor Group apparently unaffected by the countrywide takedown order? Unknown at this point, but we observe that the Egyptian Stock Exchange (www.egyptse.com) is still alive at a Noor address.

Its DNS A records indicate that it's normally reachable at 4 different IP addresses, only one of which belongs to Noor. Internet transit path diversity is a sign of good planning by the Stock Exchange IT staff, and it appears to have paid off in this case. Did the Egyptian government leave Noor standing so that the markets could open next week?[/QUOTE]

-egypttse.com is down
The sweetest gyal
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Deal Guru
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Feb 10, 2007
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Despite the freedom we thought we had on the internet. This shows how vulnerable the internet is.
The sweetest gyal
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Feb 15, 2008
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Calgary
Still want the Internet to be non-redundant, and run by an arm of government??
TodayHello wrote: ...The Banks are smarter than you - they have floors full of people whose job it is to read Mark77 posts...
Deal Expert
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Apr 16, 2001
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Oh, shut up, shill.

Does this look government run?

EGYPT


Acess http://www.access.com.eg


AlexNet http://www.alexnet.com.eg


BEC (British Electronics & Computer Co) http://www.bec-online.com


Commnet http://www.commnet.com.eg/cngmain.htm


Computer Networks Services http://www.cns-egypt.com


Cyber Egypt http://www.cyberegypt.com


Data Express http://www.dataxprs.com.eg


Datum http://www.datum.com.eg


Egypt for Information Technology http://www.egyfit.com.eg


Egypt Network http://www.egyptnetwork.com


Egypt On Line http://www.egyptonline.com


Egypt Web http://www.EgyptWeb.com


Egyptian Information Services http://www.eis.com.eg


ETS Net http://www.etsnet.com.eg


ENSTINET http://www.sti.sci.eg


EUN http://www.frcu.eun.eg


Gega Net http://www.gega.net


Globalnet http://www.globalnet.com.eg


Infinity http://www.infinity.com.eg


Instinct http://www.instinct.com


Integrated Solutions http://www.is-egypt.com


Internet Alexandria http://inetalex.ie-eg.com


Internet Egypt http://www.internetegypt.com


Internet Society (ISE) http://www.ise.org.eg


InTouch Communications Services http://www.intouch.com


IT & Internet Service center http://www.sedapnet.org.eg


Link Egypt http://www.link.com.eg


MetalSoft http://www.metalsoft.com.eg


Net Nile http://www.netnile.com


Net Wave http://www.net-wave.ne


Nile Net http://www.nilenet.com


Nor Net http://www.nor-net.net


Omega Computer Center http://www.omega-eg.com


PACC http://www.pacc.com.eg


Purenet http://www.purenet.com.eg


Regional Information Technology Enterprise http://www.rite.com


RITSEC http://www.ritsec.com.eg


Shahd http://www.sinainet.com.eg


Sinainet http://www.sinainet.com.eg


SOFICom http://www.soficom.com.eg


Star Net http://www.starnet.com.eg


Techno Mina Communication http://www.tecmina.com.eg


The Way Out http://www.wayout.net


Tradenet http://www.tradenet.com.eg


Way Out http://www.wayout.net


WorldNet http://www.worldnet.com.eg
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Deal Guru
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Oct 14, 2003
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Those are just the local providers, the backbones out of the country, which were the ones turned off were, Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, and Etisalat Misr.

The fact that the government can just say, stop what you are doing, is pretty conclusive evidence the government has some control over them.
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Deal Fanatic
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Jul 26, 2006
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Scarborough
By looking at some Egyptian websites and looking at when they became unreachable we are able to determine when the problem started.

At this point egypt.gov.eg is offline. This network, 81.21.104.0/24 was withdrawn at January 27th at 22:28 U...TC . Another example is www.ahram.org.eg an Egyptian news paper. This network 196.219.246.0/24, became unreachable at the exact same time, January 27th at 22:28 UTC.

Quoted from http://bgpmon.net/blog/?p=450
Deal Fanatic
Nov 11, 2008
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So if this were to happen in canada, they would only need to call rogers and bell and telus up and say shut the network down?
Deal Addict
Sep 19, 2006
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Toronto
EPcjay wrote: So if this were to happen in canada, they would only need to call rogers and bell and telus up and say shut the network down?
To kill off most of the Internet as Canada knows it? Pretty much, although you have to include Shaw in that list as well. What's funny though is that depending on how ISP's where asked to route (or not route in this case) their traffic, ISOhunt might still be reachable and thus you'd be able to still torrent, lol.

Hopefully this event highlight's the importance of not having an Internet kill switch and people will be more aware of how this will affect them should such an idea ever come up in Canada.
Sr. Member
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Sep 1, 2008
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People should take pictures/small clips of Police/Military brutality via their phones and then MMS to friends/reporters in other countries until they turn off the phone services.
Deal Guru
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Apr 4, 2001
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roadrunner17 wrote: People should take pictures/small clips of Police/Military brutality via their phones and then MMS to friends/reporters in other countries until they turn off the phone services.

They have these device in Egypt?
Deal Guru
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Oct 14, 2003
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Hopefully the people are able to achieve their goals with few deaths.
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Deal Expert
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May 14, 2007
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Scarborough / Markha…
They just pissed off all the nerds in Egypt
Deal Addict
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Jun 26, 2009
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no moar egypt pr0n 4 u :evil:
The unexamined life is not worth living.
- Socrates
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Jan 26, 2007
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Mubarak has just asked his government to resign
I post, you decide.

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