Last Internet provider in Egypt goes dark

[Newsjock]

Source: Associated Press

The last of Egypt's main Internet service providers, the Noor Group, has gone dark.

The Noor Group had remained online even after Egypt's four main Internet providers — Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr — abruptly stopped shuttling Internet traffic into and out of the country Friday morning.

At about 11 p.m. local time Monday, the Noor Group became unreachable, said James Cowie, chief technology officer of Renesys, a security firm based in Manchester, N.H. Renesys monitors massive directories of "routes," or set paths that define how Web traffic moves from one place to another. The Noor Group's routes have disappeared, he said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/01/31/national/a173609S09.DTL&tsp=1

[Pholus]

1. Yeppers, we need one of those internet kill switches here too. Just in case... nt

[Jefferson23]

2. This is obviously not good but too late regardless..the word is out.

The people will be on the streets tomorrow..as I understand it, many will be walking a great
distance even though the train system is being controlled too.

[heliarc]

3. The "kill switch" is possible anywhere...

where enough ISP's are on board... Just remove the DNS index and the net goes dark

This isn't news. Mexico went dark during the Revolt in Chiapas as well. Servers at the UNAM started to resist redirect. That was in the mid 90s.

[truthisfreedom]

4. Good time to become a ham operator.

I bet the requirements for getting a license have gotten very simple.