Supplies are dwindling, journalists are being arrested, and protests continue in Egypt today, with a mass demonstration planned for tomorrow. And still, the nation is Internet silent—almost. We remarked on Friday about this historic act of government internet censorship, but just how did the Egyptian government manage to shut down nearly all Internet communication coming out of the country? It wasn't a "kill switch," experts say—the Egyptian government didn't push a button and take down the country's Internet service providers. Rather, Egyptian ISPs all must have licenses with the state and follow the government's regulations, however draconian they may be. So if the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority called and told them to shut down, they didn't have much choice.
That comports with the data published by Renesys, a net monitoring firm, which saw individual ISPs go dark within minutes of one another. “First impressions: this sequencing looks like people getting phone ...
