Syria Cut Off From Global Internet

SAN FRANCISCO - Internet connections between Syria and the outside world were cut off on Tuesday, according to data from Google Inc and other global Internet companies.

Google's Transparency Report pages showed traffic to Google services pages from the country, embroiled in a civil war that has lasted more than two years, suddenly stopping shortly before 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT).

The vast majority of websites within Syria were rendered unreachable as well, other experts said, as the county appeared to shut itself off.

"Effectively, the shutdown disconnects Syria from Internet communication with the rest of the world. It's unclear whether Internet communication within Syria is still available," wrote Dan Hubbard, chief technology officer at infrastructure services firm OpenDNS.

"Although we can't yet comment on what caused this outage, past incidents were linked to both government-ordered shutdowns and damage to the infrastructure, which included fiber cuts and power outages."

Hubbard wrote on an OpenDNS blog that a similar Internet blackout in Syria occurred in November and lasted three days. About 80 Internet pathways normally are listed by Syrian providers, but only three were being advertised to machines searching for connections late on Tuesday.

http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Report-Syria-cut-off-from-the-internet-312430

Hogndog

 

Im surprised syria did not cut internet connections sooner.Sounds like a form of isolationism is in place.

Understandable considering the situation there.But to be honest how many syrian websites do you come across as an average home user.

This will probably not affect a large majority of western users.

Keeping my input small before it turns into a political and ethical debate.

 

Back online apparently: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/...-offline-internet-in-syria-is-being-restored/

 

Ethics should be completely fine to discuss, and it honestly doesn't matter how it affects Western users, there are other people in the world besides the West.

This could have been a "pull the plug" incident again, or it could have even been collateral damage, considering the entire country is a war zone. It also very well could have been a malfunction. Now that it's up, it matters little what caused it.

 

What has western users got to do with this in the 1st place? I wish to understand what you're trying to convey by such a statement because from where I stand, it comes across as potentially offensive. It's almost akin to saying that that the world revolves around westerners only.

 

Why are we discussing this then if it has nothing to do with westerners?

 

Um, because this is an internet/computer/tech discussion forum and not an American/British/African/Arab/etc matters forum? The Earth is bigger than the West, or are you one of those that thinks that the world runs solely because "West is best"? I can't apologize for the harsh statements because your comments ooze that kind of mentality whether you mean them that way or not. Hopefully with this little exchange over with, we can get back to Syrian internet outages.

 

You seem to forget that the political is very much entwined with tech aspect.

Thats for another thread.

 

No, that's what you're assuming. You know what assume means, right? For all you know a cable got damaged by a hungry ibex or, you know, Mama Nature just got a little miffed. It happens. Bombs, Mother Nature, a technical "oops" or government/opposition interference, it doesn't really matter to this particular discussion. It matters that it went down and, thankfully, it's back up.