Syria's Internet Goes Dark - Again

by **Ponee** Thu Mar 20, 2014 7:45 pm

Syria's Internet Goes Dark - Again

By Devin Coldewey

Syria has once again dropped off the Internet as fighting continued in the country. It's the first such major outage there in 2014, but only the latest in a long series going back at least three years.

Internet connectivity monitoring firm Renesys posted on its "Internet events bulletin" blog that 95 percent of the country's networks disappeared at about 8:30 a.m. ET Thursday (2:30 p.m. Syria time), and have stayed down since.
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Renesys classifies Syria as a "severe risk" for Internet shutdown, since the entire country's Internet access is controlled through the state-run Syrian Telecommunications Establishment — greatly simplifying the process of shutting down connections.

Furthermore, under 100 outside network connections need to be shut down in order to isolate the country; the U.S. has around 300 times that number that would have to be taken down, which would make the process of cutting off Internet access here extremely difficult.

http://www.nbcnews.com/#/tech/internet/syrias-internet-goes-dark-again-n58046