Egypt Leaves the Internet (Renesys blog)

Posted Jan 28, 2011 17:30 UTC (Fri) by ajb (subscriber, #9694)
In reply to: Egypt Leaves the Internet (Renesys blog) by jspaleta
Parent article: Egypt Leaves the Internet (Renesys blog)

Not completely true: The problem for the Egyptian authorities are worried about their citizens communicating freely with each other- not with foreigners. Cutting off international access removes access to twitter and facebook. If diaspora was widespread, cutting off the rest of the internet wouldn't help.

Egypt Leaves the Internet (Renesys blog)

Posted Jan 28, 2011 18:10 UTC (Fri) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link] (7 responses)

I've read reports that they also shut down the .eg resolvers: so even if you had Diaspora, for most users without a DNS address it would be as good as offline too.

The only realistic way to have a system which would be out of Government control would be some mesh-based wireless network which had a decentralised naming system. In a country like Egypt there are obvious geographical problems with an idea like that, and even in a best case you'd need a substantial amount of coverage for it to be practical.

I think it basically has to be acknowledged that there is essentially no technical solution that can fend off such an attack: fundamentally, Governments that are unable to exercise control over such key infrastructure are not really in power in the first place.

Egypt Leaves the Internet (Renesys blog)

Posted Jan 28, 2011 19:56 UTC (Fri) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link] (3 responses)

Why would a mesh based wired system not work also?

It's almost as if the current history and the status quo prevents us from thinking that things could be different.

An alternate course to a monopolistic phone company based phone network (and thus internet) system could well have evolved (and still could, if people cared) by the cooperative efforts of individuals, communities and corporations. People can/could have run wires to their immediate neighbors' houses if they felt like it (and the laws didn't prevent it, which they likely do in most jurisdictions). Communities can/could have funded and owned the wires to other communities. Corporations can/could fund (and charge for) some infrastructure for long hauls and could help local efforts when requested to do so. Such a system of distributed responsibility would be much harder to control and censor then one built in the first place, and still owned in most cases, by government monopoly.

All it takes is: ...the desire, the belief that it is important, and the removal/circumvention of any legislative barriers to it.

Egypt Leaves the Internet (Renesys blog)

Posted Jan 28, 2011 20:14 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

mesh networks work over a short range, but only in relativly low useage environments. for longer range you need long range single hops. they can be provided wirelessly, but that takes fixed infrastructure (towers, tight directional antennas, satellites, etc) but plain old wire is much cheaper to operate (even if it may be more expensive to run initially) and is FAR more reliable

Egypt Leaves the Internet (Renesys blog)

Posted Jan 29, 2011 11:38 UTC (Sat) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link] (1 responses)

A mesh wired system would absolutely work, but the likelihood of being able to setup such a system seems remote to me. National telecoms infrastructure generally isn't designed like that for practical reasons, and wires are even more hostage to local geography than wireless is.

its been done in spain

Posted Jan 31, 2011 11:21 UTC (Mon) by albertoafn (guest, #64225) [Link]

its been done in spain
Its far from ideal but I suggest you to do the same thing in your country

Egypt Leaves the Internet (Renesys blog)

Posted Jan 28, 2011 23:03 UTC (Fri) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link] (2 responses)

In a country like Egypt there are obvious geographical problems with an idea like that

Not necessarily; most Egyptians live in the Nile Delta; the rest of the country is mostly empty desert.

Egypt Leaves the Internet (Renesys blog)

Posted Jan 29, 2011 11:41 UTC (Sat) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link] (1 responses)

Right, but if you have a broad wireless mesh then radio jamming in one specific area wouldn't do much more than local damage; other routes could be found.

If a wireless mesh was effectively mostly linear along a river, then you only need to jam it in a couple of points to cause serious global issues for the entire network.

Egypt Leaves the Internet (Renesys blog)

Posted Jan 31, 2011 18:36 UTC (Mon) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link]

"If a wireless mesh was effectively mostly linear along a river, then you only need to jam it in a couple of points to cause serious global issues for the entire network."

Use wire at those points.