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Syria Falls Off the Internet Again
New submitter briancox2 writes with news that all internet traffic from Syria has disappeared. Umbrella Security Labs explains:
"Routing on the Internet relies on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP distributes routing information and makes sure all routers on the Internet know how to get to a certain IP address. When an IP range becomes unreachable it will be withdrawn from BGP, this informs routers that the IP range is no longer reachable. For example, one of the name servers for the DNS zone .SY is ns1.tld.sy with IP address 82.137.200.85. Normally our routers would expect a BGP route for 82.137.192.0/18. Currently that route has disappeared and we no longer have a way to reach the nameservers for .SY that reside in Syria. ... Currently there are just three routes in the BGP routing tables for Syria, while normally it’s close to eighty. ... Effectively, the shutdown disconnects Syria from Internet communication with the rest of the world."
...they use Centurylink.
Have you read my blog lately?
has the nation Syria also fallen into a black hole? please?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Censorship != Damage
The "non-TOR" internet does not route around damaged sections.
The "non-TOR" internet should be renamed to the stasi-net.
Does it go on forever?
Oh Snap the net is down!
Well someone plug it back in! Also, I'm pretty sure you have to use a crossover cable when connecting one Internet to another.
Had absolutely nothing to do with it!
Glad to know Umbrella Corp is diversifying. When can I order my clone of Milla?
When a government attempts to squelch dissent, too often they wind up resorting to suppression of the freedom of speech and access to information. The internet, a luxury to many of us living large 1st-World lives, is the epitome of freedom in the Third World.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Obviously I don't understand networking all that well. How do you cut off a whole country from the internet?
It would be interesting to find out how Syria is physically connected to the Internet, and who the operators on both sides actually are.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
New submitter briancox2 writes with news that all internet traffic from Syria has disappeared.
Right, gotcha. With the absurd amounts of civil unrest and bloodshed going on, it's amazing it remained available this long. No problem at all believing that.
Routing on the Internet relies on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP distributes routing information and makes sure all routers on the Internet know how to get to a certain IP address. When an IP range becomes unreachable it will be withdrawn from BGP, this informs routers that the IP range is no longer reachable.
Yeeeeeah. Which is what happened here. Probably due to the government or the rebels knocking said connections off by force.
For example, one of the name servers for the DNS zone .SY is ns1.tld.sy with IP address 82.137.200.85.
Um... not sure we care. They're off the internet. Given the circumstances, I very highly doubt it's a DNS issue.
Normally our routers would expect a BGP route for 82.137.192.0/18. Currently that route has disappeared and we no longer have a way to reach the nameservers for .SY that reside in Syria.
That's an awful lot of wasted words for "Syria is off the internet".
Currently there are just three routes in the BGP routing tables for Syria, while normally it’s close to eighty. ... Effectively, the shutdown disconnects Syria from Internet communication with the rest of the world.
Yeah, look, when I see a server reduced to molten slag due to being in a warzone and the hazards therein and then notice the internet connection isn't working, my first hypothesis generally isn't the routing tables.
They won't need the internet anyway. Bibi Netanyahu is gonna bomb them back to the Stone Age.
an ill wind that blows no good
Releasing the Skynet virus into Syria requires them to be disconnected from the rest of the world.
This might not have had anything to do with Basar Al Assad (or whatever) and his fight with rebels. It could just be they tried to migrate Syria to Windows 8...
If Syria can't make it back to technological civilization can we have their IPV4 address space,then?
Everyone assumes that this was done deliberately but Syria is in the middle of a civil war and technical problems could be just as likely. I imagine router replacement parts would be hard to come by at the very least.
Obviously Syria hates freedom, someone should feed them a helping heap of freedom!
Well you ought to get a reality-slap. .. just look at those hefty military aid numbers) for those al-qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations (oh my what a irony) known on mainstream media as "rebels". Rebels in context of "people against oppression".
It's not a civil war. They are fighting al-qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations operating there. Israel bombed them as well couple of days ago.
They(Israel) provide financial support, as well as Britain (and probably US, if not directly, then indirectly.. because US = Great friend of Israel
It's a old technique .. .on how to do a regime change indirectly. Quite popular these days.
The only problem they (us,israel,britain) have now.. is that they can't ship weapons directly there, due to international sanctions.
So for now they just supply them with vehicles, technology and money.
If you want citations... google them.
Regarding internet cutoff.. it might also be done by those 'rebels', to make Syria look bad. Here, everybody assumed Syria's government did that, so if the rebels really did do it, they succeeded in the mission.
If that's not the case.. well f it. If they think that's best course of action for their country in wartime.. they might be right.
civil war - A war between citizens of the same country. Al-qaeda affiliated terrorists or not as long as the vast majority of rebels are Syrian citizens, which they are, than its a civil war
And nothing of value was lost
those Dell "PCs" that they bought!!!
Does anyone really care if some third world cesspool disconnects from the Internet?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Then every other country US (and it's allies) indirectly invaded is in fact a civil war of that country.
To quote a wikipedia article on the subject:
"Due to significant involvement, both direct and indirect, of foreign nations and militant groups, the conflict is sometimes described as a proxy war.[442]"
Civil war.. with dozens of countries involved and same number of dodgy groups linked to cia and al-qaida. Right. If it makes you feel better.
Correction to a factual error. The Israelis bombed Syrian government installations - reputedly to destroy weapons en-route to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
The Boston Police Department is under surveillance by the FBI, CIA, Treasury and even DoD units.
The Chief, when learning of the undercover investigation made a rash decision to pulled the plug on the Main District Office sending 5 blocks of Boston into darkness. This was necessary for the Chief to go to the basement and start dismantling the Meth Lab installed there and disposing of raw cocaine and other assorted drug culture items beloved by the 'Officers' of the BPD.
America, Russia, and China all benefit from keeping their proxy war semi-secret.
Seriously, I am curious, would it be possible/feasible to create a more decentralized infrastructure eg. by using (many) wireless transmitters instead of just "one big cable"? I am also wondering the same thing for big cities ... why the heck doesn't my house have an inbuilt network (that is owned by the house owner, not some isp) and is directly connected to its neighbor buildings? I mean, seriously, if enough people do this then it should be possible to route most traffic through that internal network instead of having to rely on the ISP (and it also promotes people to offer their own content/services/whatever as they have a pretty awesome connection by default).
This is obviously the work of sharks trained by the US government.
But would it be possible for the insurgents to take control of the physical network in the areas they control, negotiate and set up new connections to networks in the neighboring countries?
I guess the telco(s) i Syria have more or less a star topology infrastructure with the hub in or near Damascus, and I guess the international connections use dedicated fibers from the hub to similar hubs in other countries, as well as satellite links and possibly some forms of terrestial point-to-point radio links.
How hard would it be to reconnect equipment they get hold of, and reorganize the topology?
If some of the dedicated fibers carrying international traffic, pass through rebel territory, can they connect to these links, eg. at the repeaters?
There is no substitute for common sense. Especially, no body of rules will do.
like The Onion scorned.
al-CIA-da rebels backed by israel have cut the cables, so Syrian people can't post about the incasion
I am sure this is not connected to Israel's deniable nuclear weapons...
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
There was a problem was cabling in the sea, is that it again???
From the article, one of Syria's tld nameservers is unreachable. That shoudln't affect in any way the ability of folks in Syria to access any website that doesn't have a .sy extension, and it also shouldn't affect the rest of the world's ability to access any websites in Syria that have another tld. The headline is misleading.
This is akin to saying that I've fallen off the Internet if the DNS servers for my domain name are offline. While you can't get to my website, you can certainly get to other websites on the same server if they're using other DNS servers, and I can still continue to work normally because my ability to resolve my own hostnames is not a requirement for me to access the rest of the Internet.