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 When an IP range becomes unreachable it will be withdrawn from BGP, this informs routers that the IP range is no longer reachable.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."

It could be just a technical problem

[Dorianny]

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.

Re:how do you remove a country from the internet?

[budgenator]

All it takes is a couple F16s with 500 pound bombs.