Holy cow!
From http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fas...e_interne.html
[oops - typo in title....government....if a mod wants to fix that....]
From http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fas...e_interne.html
In a post on the Renesys site from around 7 p.m. Thursday night, the company observed that nearly all of the routes to Egypt were simultaneously withdrawn, starting at about 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Thursday night and 12:34 a.m. in Egypt. "Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn," the company wrote, "leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers."
This is completely unprecedented, according to Renesys. While other countries such as Tunisia and Iran have blocked parts of the Internet or manipulated access to make it very slow, he wrote that "the Egyptian government's actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map." The only part of Egypt's Internet presence that had not been affected, he noted, was the 83 live routes of the Noor Group, which holds one of IP addresses for the Egyptian Stock Exchange, which is still accessible. Cowie said this was excellent planning on behalf of the Stock Exchange's IT staff and posits the theory that the Egyptian government let the group continue so that the markets could open next week.
This is completely unprecedented, according to Renesys. While other countries such as Tunisia and Iran have blocked parts of the Internet or manipulated access to make it very slow, he wrote that "the Egyptian government's actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map." The only part of Egypt's Internet presence that had not been affected, he noted, was the 83 live routes of the Noor Group, which holds one of IP addresses for the Egyptian Stock Exchange, which is still accessible. Cowie said this was excellent planning on behalf of the Stock Exchange's IT staff and posits the theory that the Egyptian government let the group continue so that the markets could open next week.
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