Syria Severed From the Internet

More technically, what happened was that within the global routing table, all 84 blocks of IP addresses assigned to Syria have gone unreachable. That means that Internet traffic destined for that country is going undelivered, and also that traffic coming from within it cannot get out to the world.

People on Twitter are starting to notice. And hashtag #SyriaBlackout is showing up:
»twitter.com/search?q=%23SyriaBlackout

The Associated Press (via the Seattle Times) has a report citing Syrian activists saying that the government has cut off Internet and wireless phone connections in and around several neighborhoods of the capital city of Damascus. There have been some clashes there between government forces and the rebels.

Reuters is reporting that there has been some heavy fighting along a road leading to Damascus International Airport, southeast of the city. The road has been closed, and Dubai-based Emirates Airlines has suspended flights in and out of there for now.

A Syrian security source told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the army had started a "cleansing operation" in the capital to confront rebel advances.

Elsewhere in Damascus, warplanes bombed Kafr Souseh and Daraya, two neighborhoods that fringe the center of the city where rebels have managed to hide out and ambush army units, according to opposition activists.

"On the outskirts of Damascus, there are mortars and more attacks. The regime is thinking of protecting itself ... with checkpoints in the next few days ... (It) seems the regime is preparing for major battle on Damascus."

this is a two fold purpose, they want to make sure the rebels have a harder time communicating. But this also makes it more challenging for news outlets to get their information out. Limiting them to easy to jam satellite links. After all if the current government wants to bomb without discretion and knows they will kill hundreds of civilians you do not want it happening live to the western world on the BBC.

On a related topic:
I fear this is all for nothing for the people of Syria. Because even if they were to win, they would most likely go on the same path of Iran and Egypt. Where they trade a Dictatorship for a Theocracy, ending up with a worse government than they had.

I think one of the biggest problems there is how Islam is a Government first and a religion second. As long as they / we don't admit that they need to separate church from state, real progress can't be made.

This is only possible because all it takes is a simple phone call to your countries telcos/cable providers.

It's not that hard to shut down the internet when there's only 1-2 providers to choose from in most places in the world.

Its harder to shut it down when you have multiple transnational backbones, but just takes more guys with guns or threats of guns.

All it takes is a few guys with axes and the entire country can be severed from any backbone. even here in the USA, there is a public map of where trans-oceanic pipes come in and leave, and where they cross land borders as well, meaning, all it would take for many countries to cut themselves from the internet is a well coordinated assault on those publicly published backbones/interconnects. Hell, there are about 50 on the US borders, so, cutting the USA off from world access could be as easy as taking about 100 people and having them cut and chop all fiber undersea cables. even if you got 30 of the 50, the other 20 would be so clogged that anything outside the USA would become nearly unreachable.

their country use only 84 ip ?

I call on all hackers, Pirate bay types along with Anonymous to help the Syrian rebels out. Or maybe Best Buy geek squad will step up lol