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The Countries Most Vulnerable To an Internet Shutdown
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "In the wake of Syria's 52-hour digital blackout last week, the networking firm Renesys performed an analysis of which countries are most susceptible to an Internet shutdown, based simply on how many distinct entities control the connections between the country's networks and those of the outside world. It found that for 61 countries and territories, just one or two Internet service providers maintain all external connections–a situation that could make possible a quick cutoff from the world with a well-placed government order or physical attack."
and anyone still in Second Life.
Because they measured it the wrong way.
Their measure how many distinct entities control exit and entry nodes. This has no meaning in some cases, such as CHine, as you righteously pointed out. If there are 100 entities controlling such nodes and ALL are immediately listening to a government's order to shut down, then that's worse than a country with TWO distinctly controlled nodes, out of which ZERO listen to a government order.
Unrelated: My country, Romania, shows as "Resistant".
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I think this list is concerned with a more specific question. This measure is more useful to which countries could be silenced during a similar uprising, where there is armed opposition. China is unlikely to undergo such an uprising for the same reasons that their ISPs are willing to follow a government's orders. The government enjoys much more popular support with the Chinese than Syria does/did with it's citizens. If there were such a rebellion however, China would stay online longer probably, since presumably some of the entities would join the revolt, would ignore the government's orders, and would not be as easily forcibly shut down because of how many different ones there were. The question wasn't really about general internet censorship, there are other lists and measurements for that.
At least i can still play my diablo III in single player mode...
Be seeing you...
The most telling comment from the actual orginal post reads:
"Ten providers also seems to be the threshold below which one finds significant additional risks from infrastructure sharing — there may be a single cable, or a single physical-layer provider who actually owns most of the infrastructure on which the various providers offer their services."
How many of the 61 at "severe risk" countries are micro-states in the middle of the ocean with a single cable connecting them to the internet? More than half; so nothing too sinister about the size of the "severe risk" category.
Oh - it's nice to see that New Zealand has cemented its place in the list of nice countries who are "extremely resistant" by having more than 40 ISPs - unfortunately there's only one organisation that controls the two connections out of NZ on the Southern Cross Cable So the home of that fiendish master-criminal Mr K. Dot Com should rightly be lumped in with Syria, Libya & that famous hot bed of international crime, The Cook Islands.
Why does Slashdot keep linking to secondary sources, like Forbes.com, when the primary source is so easily available? Laziness would be my first guess.
Here is the much-better Renesys blog post: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2012/11/could-it-happen-in-your-countr.shtml
Questions about their methods of reasoning are the most interesting.
There may be 5 ISPs, each operating their own logical notwork, with their own IP space, servers, and everything--but they may all share the same physical fibre optic cable out of the country--especially if the country is an Island. New Zealand would be a good example of this: it is about 1500 km from Australia, and 1000 km from Fiji. There are only a few submarine fibre optic cables connecting to the rest of the world. Perhaps Southern Cross Cable and SPIN only?
The authors acknowledge they were mostly unable to analyse this, and had to guess about the number of physical conduits. They say they will have more to say about the limited physical connections in the future.