<div dir="ltr">Here is a good article on shutdown of net in Egypt. <br><br><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html?ref=world">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html?ref=world</a><br>
<br>However, I still find it technically confusing. Can the engineers among us again please review for the social scientists what happened here precisely?<br><br><b>Quoting</b><br><br>"One of the government’s strongest levers is <a href="http://www.telecomegypt.com.eg/english/index.asp" title="Company Web site, in English">Telecom Egypt</a>,
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.".[ . . . .]<br><br>"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." .[ .. . . ] <br><br>"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." [ . . . . ]<br><br>"Over the next five days, the government furiously went about
extinguishing nearly all of the Internet links to the outside world that
had survived the first assault, data collected by Western network
monitors show. Although a few Egyptians managed to post to Facebook or
send sporadic e-mails, the vast majority of the country’s Internet
subscribers were cut off." [ . . .. ] <br><b><br>This is a bit clearer </b><br><br><p>
"Individual Internet service providers were also called on the carpet and
ordered to shut down, as they are required to do by their licensing
agreements if the government so decrees. </p><p>
According to an Egyptian engineer and an international telecom expert
who both spoke on the condition of anonymity, at least one provider, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/vodafone_group_plc/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More information about Vodafone Group Plc" class="meta-org">Vodafone</a>,
expressed extreme reluctance to shut down but was told that if it did
not comply, the government would use its own “off” switch via the
Telecom Egypt infrastructure — a method that would be much more
time-consuming to reverse. Other exchanges, like an important one in
Alexandria, may also have been involved. </p><p>
Still, even major providers received little notice that the moves were
afoot, said an Egyptian with close knowledge of the telecom industry who
would speak only anonymously. </p><p>
“You don’t get a couple of days with something like this,” he said. “It was less than an hour.”" [ . . . .] <br></p><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 8:05 PM, Barrack Otieno <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:otieno.barrack@gmail.com">otieno.barrack@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">Interesting turn of events , sovereignty at play :-).<div><br></div><div>Best Regards<br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote"><div><div></div><div class="h5">On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 2:07 PM, Wamuyu Gatheru <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wamuyu@soko-id.co.ke" target="_blank">wamuyu@soko-id.co.ke</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
The service providers were basically asked to shut down or loose their licenses. A couple days ago the companies argued that protests were taking place in even a bigger way without the internet and even phones. Incidentally even public transport across the country was shut down. I think all is back today after shameful 'Mungiki' type violence.<br>
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Quoting warigia bowman <<a href="mailto:warigia@gmail.com" target="_blank">warigia@gmail.com</a>>:<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
In el rehab, cairo at american university<br>
<br>
gov shut down all texting and Internet as well as al jazeera arabic from<br>
Thursday until this afternoon. Food for thought<br>
<br>
what is the technical situation? How did government of egypt do this? Is<br>
gateway controlled by gov, or did gov pull licenses?<br>
<br>
need answers<br>
<br>
Rigia<br>
--<br>
Dr. Warigia Bowman<br>
Visiting Assistant Professor<br>
American University in Cairo<br>
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</blockquote>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Barrack O. Otieno<div>Afriregister Ltd (Kenya)</div><div><a href="http://www.afriregister.com" target="_blank">www.afrire</a><a href="http://gister.bi" target="_blank">gister.bi</a>, <a href="http://www.afriergister.com" target="_blank">www.afriregister.com</a></div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr"><div>Dr. Warigia Bowman</div>
<div>Visiting Assistant Professor</div>
<div>American University in Cairo</div>
<div>Global Affairs and Public Policy </div>
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