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Bandwidth Being Throttled In Bahrain?
mahiskali writes "In light of recent uprising and protests in Bahrain, reports are coming in showing slower than usual internet access across the country. Broadband providers are claiming this is due to high-usage and heavy load, but Twitter is abuzz claiming a government-imposed lockdown. Accounts on the popular media-sharing site Bambuser have reportedly been blocked as well."
How about that internet kill switch?
Now that Egypt did it first (supposedly) other governments realize they can do it too. Protests are already pissed off and protesting so what does adding net blockage matter? I can only hope some countries adopt legislative measures against such civil rights violations. To anyone who wants to say net access isn't a right, go bugger off back to the hole you came from. And I don't mean people deserve free net access, just that their access can not be impeded.
To those who say that the Internet is only used by a very small percent of people and that individuals "on the ground" don't care about it and that it doesn't bring real change, tell me why censoring the Internet is the FIRST step taken by authoritarian governments when protests arise?
It's only a matter of time before police get fed up and violence starts. Either that or the protestors themselves get violent.
Boredom is bliss.
Did every country just get this hardware installed or did everyone just start protesting or did I just find out about world events?
Seems like every other story is a new country blacking out the entire public sector.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Do these tweeting birds also have hats made of tin foil? I know revolution is popular over there right now, but does that mean that anything that happens now points toward it?
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Accounts on the popular media-sharing site Bambuser have reportedly been blocked as well.
Either I don't spend enough time on the web, or that word "popular" doesn't mean what you think it means.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Didn't Neil Sedaka prophecize this?
"Oh, I feel capped here in Bahrain ..."
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
According to this graph from Arbor Networks, http://www.monkey.org/~labovit/bahrain.png the peaks are lower and the valleys are higher. It's fairly clear that there's more interest in using the internet, but something is throttling the bandwidth.
'nuff said
Amazing how easy it is for teh gov to pull the plug on our communications networks eh? We need a system that is independent of the networks they control, like internet ham radio or something.
Remember how slow the internet was on September 11th 2001?
THE GOVERNMENT!!!!
February 17, 2011
UNREST IN THE MIDDLE EAST: A SPECIAL REPORT
Footage of self-immolations in Algeria, clashes between police and protesters in Yemen and Bahrain, government reshufflings in Jordan and fledgling street demonstrations in Iran could lead to the impression of a domino effect under way in the Middle East in which aging autocrats are on the verge of being uprooted by Tunisia-inspired revolutionary fervor. A careful review of unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, however, exposes a very different picture.
Many of the protests sprouting up in these countries have a common thread, and that alone is cause for concern for many of the region's regimes. High youth unemployment, a lack of political representation, repressive police states, a lack of housing and rising commodity prices are among the more common complaints voiced by protesters across the region. Social media has been used both as an organizing tool for protesters and a surveillance enabler by regimes. More generally, the region is witnessing a broad, public reaction to the layers of corruption that have become entrenched around these regimes over the past several decades.
Regime responses to those complaints also have been relatively consistent, including subsidy handouts; changes to the government, in many cases cosmetic; promises of job growth, electoral reform, and a repeal of emergency rule; and in the case of Egypt, Yemen and Algeria, public dismissal of illegitimate succession plans. Anti-regime protesters in many of these countries have faced off with mostly for-hire pro-regime supporters tasked with breaking up the demonstrations, the camel cavalry in Egypt being the most vivid example of this tactic.
While the circumstances at first glance appear dire for most of the
regimes, each of these states also has unique circumstances. While Tunisia
can be considered a largely organic, successful uprising, for most of
these states, the regimes retain the tools to suppress dissent, divide the
opposition and maintain power. In others, those engaging in the civil
unrest are pawns in behind-the-scenes power struggles. In all, the assumed
impenetrability of the internal security apparatus and the loyalties and
intentions of the army remain decisive factors in determining the
direction of the unrest.
Egypt: The Military's 'Revolution'
In the past several days Egypt has not witnessed a popular revolution but
a carefully managed succession by the military. The demonstrations,
numbering around 200,000 to 300,000 at their peak, were genuinely inspired
by the regime turnover in Tunisia, pent-up socio-economic frustrations
(youth unemployment in Egypt stands out around 25 percent) and extreme
disillusionment with former President Hosni Mubarak's regime.
It must be recognized that the succession crisis in Egypt was playing out
between the country's military elite and Mubarak well before protests
began in Egypt on Jan. 25. The demonstrators, encouraged by both internal
and external pro-democracy groups, were in fact a critical tool the
military used to maneuver Mubarak out while preserving the regime. So far,
the Egyptian military has maintained the appearance of being receptive to
opposition demands. Over time, however, the gap between opposition and
military elite interests will grow, as the latter works to maintain its
clout in the political affairs of the state while also containing a
perceived Islamist threat.
Tunisia: Not Over Yet
Though Tunisia had some domestic pro-democracy groups before unrest began
in December 2010, Tunisia saw one of the region's more organic uprisings.
Years of frustration with corruption and the political and business
monopoly of former President President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's regime,
high youth unemployment (estimated at around 30 percent in the 15-29 age
group), and rising commodity prices fueled the unrest. The self-immolation
of an educated young man who was trying to sell fru
Show me Saudi Arabia's "royalty" giving way to its citizens, and I'll be damned inpressed. And we'd be sure to see other nations protest.
Bahrain? It's a playground, nothing more.
you fucking fail miserably at all things life-releated.
It makes sense when you see that 90% of the web traffic is going to the adult site whatsundertheburkka.com. Oddly enough a similar site in Scotland, whatsunderthekilt.com, hasn't caused the same level of traffic.
Is Slashdot throttled? I can't possible be FP
So yes.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Well if Bambuser is being blocked (and I suspect its a mix of more slashdotting and blocking), there is also Qik and Ustream
I modern times the Internet access became the part of of freedom of speech, information and, even, movement.
Last I heard, the bandwidth problems had a lot more to do with an undersea cable fault that they've had for some time, now.
It's not throttling, just hellish routing, by all accounts.
-Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience-
My dad spent a lot of his time, way back when, building radar stations in Canada, to protect the USA from attacks from the USSR. Now it seems to be that governments' defense against attacks, internal or external, means blocking the Internet.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Yet another reason to avoid creating bloated sites.
And yet another reason to abandon bloated sites in favor of less bloated sites when possible.
(I'm talking to *you* Youtube and Slashdot etc)
so he is really good at failing miserably? so not all things then.
They just need to reboot their router.
ISPs have been throttling bandwidth for US customers for years, cry me a river.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
This is getting more ridiculous everyday passes by Bahrain can't shut people up by disconnecting them from the internet and at the same time kill some try put out the fire from here, and spill gazoline over there
If a government wanted me out of the streets, they'd keep the internet ON.
Take away my online gaming, email, chat, facebook, online shopping, and all my regular sites and I don't care what the protest is about - I'll march out and join it.
Internet for smart people with strong opinions and weak socak skills. How many slashdotters make the time to get out in the public arena and express themselves without the comfort of their clever pseudonyms? It takes a lot of bravery to lead the mob, but with the internet you can hide in the mob and still lead it. Mobs need leaders if they are going to accomplish anything worthwhile, but when they show their face, they tend to die or get arrested.