Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

The Internet Dies in Egypt, in Pictures

Graphic images and videos of violence and swarms of protesters in Egypt have helped communicate the impact of anti-government demonstrations to the world. The near-total shutdown of Egyptian Internet access is also something that benefits from illustration.

What exactly Egypt did to cut online access isn’t that well-understood–the informed hypothesis we’ve seen indicates that the government made phone calls to the nation’s major providers, shutting down all of them but one and making 93 percent of Egyptian networks unavailable.

Here’s a chart that shows that process, via Internet routing analytics firm Renesys:

And here’s Renesys’ illustration of withdrawn Internet prefixes:

Here’s network security provider Arbor Networks’ illustration of the dramatic drop of traffic to Egypt:

And here’s a before-and-after visualization of Internet routing in Egypt published on the blog Extra Exploit.


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There was a worry before I started this that I was going to burn every bridge I had. But I realize now that there are some bridges that are worth burning.

— Valleywag editor Sam Biddle