Reports are coming in that the Syrian government has shut down most (or at least large portions) of the internet after suffering months of protests from citizens.
Starting at 3:35 UTC today (6:35am local time), approximately two-thirds of all Syrian networks became unreachable from the global Internet. Over the course of roughly half an hour, the routes to 40 of 59 networks were withdrawn from the global routing table.
This image shows the current state (green: reachable, red: unreachable) of each network prefix in the Middle East this morning, visualized as a packed Hilbert-curve representation. (Renesys Blog)
Apparently the Syrian regime hasn’t learned from the (now obsolete) dictatorship of Egypt, whose former leader tried a similar stunt only to end up hastening his own demise.
Syrians still might be able to access the digital web via the phone lines (which will be extremely slow), although those lucky enough to afford satellite phones might be able to keep the world updated through various tweets.
Note: If anyone has any ideas on how those outside Syria can help feel free to let us know in the comment section below.
Originally posted on June 3, 2011 @ 1:39 pm