[kictanet] In egypt-internet governance

[warigia bowman]

Thanks McTim. This is helpful.

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 7:17 AM, McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 12:41 PM, warigia bowman <warigia at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Here is a good article on shutdown of net in Egypt.
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html?ref=world
> >
> > However, I still find it technically confusing. Can the engineers among
> us
> > again please review for the social scientists what happened here
> precisely?
>
>
> I can try.
>
> There are 7 layers in the OSI model:
>
> http://www.novell.com/info/primer/art/prim02.gif
>
>
> >
> > Quoting
> >
> > "One of the government’s strongest levers is Telecom Egypt, a state-owned
> > company that engineers say owns virtually all the country’s fiber-optic
> > cables; other Internet service providers are forced to lease bandwidth on
> > those cables in order to do business.".[ . . . .]
>
>
> To get access to the rest of the Internet, Egyptian ISPs need a
> physical link to other ISPs outside of Egypt.
>
> AFAICS (walu: this means As Far As I Can See), Egypt gov said shut
> down at layer 3 or we will shut you down at layers 1 or 2.
>
> >
> > "Yet despite this decentralized design, the reality is that most traffic
> > passes through vast centralized exchanges — potential choke points that
> > allow many nations to monitor, filter or in dire cases completely stop
> the
> > flow of Internet data." .[ .. . . ]
>
>
> There must be places for ISPs to meet each other to exchange traffic.
> these are often called Internet eXchange Points or NAPS, (Network
> Access Points).  Shutting down an IXP does not necessarily sever all
> connectivity in that country, as providers have international links.
> Shutting down an IXP just severs intra-country connections.
>
>
> >
> > "There has been intense debate both inside and outside Egypt on whether
> the
> > cutoff at 26 Ramses Street was accomplished by surgically tampering with
> the
> > software mechanism that defines how networks at the core of the Internet
> > communicate with one another, or by a blunt approach: simply cutting off
> the
> > power to the router computers that connect Egypt to the outside world." [
> .
> > . . . ]
>
> We may never know, as the effect is similar, but some more data here:
>
>
> http://labs.ripe.net/Members/csquarce/three-case-studies-egyptian-disconnection
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> McTim
> "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
> route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
>



-- 
Dr. Warigia Bowman
Visiting Assistant Professor
American University in Cairo
Global Affairs and Public Policy
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