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<div class="headline_area"> Hi GG and all <br>
<br>
<br>
Events in Egypt must have slowed down the discussions on our media
council bill and I apologize for diverting you again.<br>
It is worrying that a government can shut down the internet.
There are permissible limitations/restrictions on expression and
communication contained in International laws, however these are
for narrow circumstances defined in, for example the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, where National security
and pubic order is included, but it should not be used as an
excuse. Governments should ensure that the limitations of
restrictions are provided for by clear and precise laws that
demonstrate necessity to meet the specific purpose. <br>
<br>
Anyway, Google has since introduced a speak to tweet service for
people in Egypt and see below a report by ICANN on DNS: <a
href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/twitter-by-phone-egypt/">http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/twitter-by-phone-egypt/</a>
<div> </div>
<span> </span><br>
<h1 class="entry-title"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blog.icann.org/2011/01/status-report-on-the-dns-in-egypt/Status">http://blog.icann.org/2011/01/status-report-on-the-dns-in-egypt/Status</a>
<br>
</h1>
<h1 class="entry-title">Report on the DNS in Egypt</h1>
</div>
<div class="format_text entry-content">
<p>Along with the entire global Internet community, ICANN is
watching the events unfolding in Egypt with great concern for
the safety of the people of Egypt and for their ability to use
the Internet. On January 27, most Internet connectivity to Egypt
was shut down, apparently on the instruction of the national
government. This has led to the inaccessibility of the main
domain name system (DNS) server of the Egyptian ccTLD (.eg).</p>
<p>Egypt’s top-level domain .eg is operated by the Egyptian
Universities Network (EUN) (<a
href="http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/eg.html">http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/eg.html</a>).
The Arabic script top-level domain .masr (مصر, <a
href="http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/xn--wgbh1c.html">
http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/xn--wgbh1c.html</a>) is
operated by the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority
of Egypt (NTRA) (<a
href="http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/xn--wgbh1c.html">http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/xn--wgbh1c.html</a>).</p>
<p>The primary servers they operate have been inaccessible to
those outside of Egypt since January 27. Secondary DNS servers
for .eg, located in Austria and the United States, have
continued to function with data provided before the shutdown.</p>
<p>The .مصر DNS servers are exclusively in Egypt and there do not
appear to be any secondary DNS servers outside the country. This
means that service to sites served by this top-level domain are
unreachable by the rest of the world.</p>
<p>Secondary servers copy their data from the primary server at
regular intervals. Data in the secondary DNS servers, serving
anyone in the world wishing to receive .eg DNS services, have an
expiration date. Secondary servers require regular updating from
the primary server at specified intervals – called “time to
live” (TTL) – and that time is set to expire in 140 days.</p>
<p>Normally when primary servers fail – for example, following the
earthquake in Haiti – the operator wants secondary servers to
continue operating with the last zone file they had provided.
This allows users around the world to connect to functioning
servers in their zone.</p>
<p>ICANN’s Manager for Regional Relations for the Middle East has
been communicating with both TLD operators, EUN and NTRA. The
operators of .eg have communicated with ICANN and through ICANN
are communicating with the secondary operators outside the
country. They have requested that the secondary operators
continue using the existing zone files past their time to live
timeframes, if necessary.</p>
<p>This experience offers a number of lessons, among them that a
policy to encourage the establishment of secondary servers to
promote continuity of service as well as DNS stability could be
useful and in the global public interest. ICANN will ask the
ccNSO to consider proposing a policy to address this type of
situation.</p>
<p>ICANN helps to ensure a secure and stable global Internet
through its coordination of the domain name system, and is the
global policy development body for the DNS and related matters.
More than 100 ccTLD operators are voluntary members of the
Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO), a formal
ICANN policy and coordination body.</p>
<br>
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