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 When an IP range becomes unreachable it will be withdrawn from BGP, this informs routers that the IP range is no longer reachable.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

Obviously....

[14erCleaner]

...they use Centurylink.

oh, goody

[swschrad]

has the nation Syria also fallen into a black hole? please?

Re:

[operagost]

Do you think you're any better with your DailyKos-style talking points? Are the Christians in Syria OK with you, or should Obama hit those with a drone?

Re:Censorship != Damage

[rogueippacket]

The "non-TOR" internet does not route around damaged sections.

Forgive me for a moment, but that's exactly what the Internet was designed to do. This is accomplished via routing protocols which store multiple routes to a single destination in the event of failure.
Unless you're trying to imply that TOR is a superior "type" of Internet, in which case it should be pointed out that TOR is simply an application which runs on top of all of the fiber, copper, and wireless links built by current providers. So it really doesn't matter if someone either physically cuts the cord or starts filtering your routes, TOR will not function without the underlying layers of physical and network connectivity.

Re:

[LordLimecat]

THeres a limit to what it can do. Thats like saying "if my RAID6 array fails when 3 drives go down, then its not providing redundancy". Sure it is, you just exceeded its capacity to do so.

Re:Censorship != Damage

[rogueippacket]

If Syria has dropped off the internet due to the inaccessibility of the .sy domain, then, the internet is not routing around the damage.

I see where you are coming from, but I think you're still confusing the issue. The .sy domain is inaccessible as a result of Syria withdrawing its routes from the global BGP table. Since Routing Protocols like BGP operate at a lower layer than DNS and TOR, these services are unavailable as a result. So while TOR may be able to help if Syria were simply filtering DNS, this is not the case.
It's like having your arm chopped off and wondering why you can't move your fingers.

Get with the times and stop posting rubbish that is 20 years out of date.

The Internet is still built on routing protocol which is almost 20 years old. This is the reality that we face. Whether you believe it to be rubbish or not is irrelevant - if a country can control which routes it advertises in this manner, a major redesign (or a new global routing protocol) would be required to work around it.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

TOR would route around these issues with minimal effort. The internet as it is now known, is being controlled and censored. The internet as it was, is now TOR. Get with the times and stop posting rubbish that is 20 years out of date.

So you are seriously claiming that TOR will work when the computer it is installed on has no IP address or no connection to the Internet at all???

Really?

Go install TOR on a laptop. Unplug it from the ethernet and turn off the wifi card.
Just TRY to use TOR that way, and you will find out exactly how stupidly wrong you are.

Re:

[sjames]

Theere's only so much routing around damage that can be done, particularly when authoritiesb don't want the damage routed around.. This is technology, not magic.

OTOH, if some people around the borders put up radio links into less oppressive places, they can route around the damage to an extent.

Re:

[niftymitch]

Censorship != Damage ........

Now I do wonder, what the true issue is?

Snarkieness aside something is wrong. I wonder what it is.

In conflicts communication traffic analysis is commonly used to predict offensive or other major actions. Total communication blackouts will often hide troop movements (either side) or block information about movements so defensive or counter offensive actions can take place.

The optimist in me wants to believe a backhoe dug up a cable.

The pessimist in me wonders about a major escalation that could be

Re:

[coastwalker]

Interestingly I saw a prediction of this in the comments section of the Guardian newspapers Syria coverage a couple of weeks ago. The comment noted that this would be in order to hide violent action by government troops.

Re:

[coastwalker]

Here you go https://yallasouriya.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com] - a well known "rebel" blog says:

#yallasouriya 12:39 am on May 8, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment

#Syria Internet dial up info
Pass this to #Syria, a way to get back into internet

Dial up access #Syria: [phone] [phone] [phone] user:telecomix password:telecomix OR [phone] login:toto password:toto

IT HAS STARTED – INTERNET CONNECTION IS BEGINNING TO GO OUT IN SYRIA!
The local news media in #Homs, Syria said it would

Re:

[unixisc]

Both sides in this conflict are evil, so I'd say nothing is lost if news about Syria can't be accessed from the internet.

Crossover Cable

[WillgasM]

Well someone plug it back in! Also, I'm pretty sure you have to use a crossover cable when connecting one Internet to another.

Isreal

[Synerg1y]

Had absolutely nothing to do with it!

Re:

[sconeu]

Isimaginary, on the other hand...

Seriously, guys... LEARN TO SPELL. It's "Israel", not "Isreal".

Umbrella Security Labs explains...

[flayzernax]

Glad to know Umbrella Corp is diversifying. When can I order my clone of Milla?

Re:

[flayzernax]

Yes =P

Why Is There No Second World?

[rmdingler]

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.

Re:

[Patch86]

To address the question in your title- the 1st/2nd/3rd world thing is a throwback to the Cold War. Traditionally it was defined as 1st World = America, Western Europe, Australasia + Allies, 2nd World = USSR, China, other communist countries + Allies, 3rd World = everyone who isn't 1st or 2nd World, in practice most of Africa, South America and south Asia. The connotation of 3rd World being impoverished is based on the fact that 3rd World meant "not aligned to a super power".

The whole terminology is largely

Re:

[FireFury03]

Obviously I don't understand networking all that well. How do you cut off a whole country from the internet?

By severing all the international links (either physically, or by withdrawing all the routes from BGP).

Re:

[budgenator]

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

How are they connected?

[cpghost]

It would be interesting to find out how Syria is physically connected to the Internet, and who the operators on both sides actually are.

Don't be so quick to assume!

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

This is great news

[scarboni888]

If Syria can't make it back to technological civilization can we have their IPV4 address space,then?

Re:This is great news

[CrashandDie]

What do you need those 4 addresses for, exactly?

Re:

[RoknrolZombie]

To send spam from, of course!

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:

[Dorianny]

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

Re:

[geekymachoman]

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.

Re:

[coastwalker]

Correction to a factual error. The Israelis bombed Syrian government installations - reputedly to destroy weapons en-route to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Syria goes off the air

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

And nothing of value was lost

Must be

[Anonymous Coward]

those Dell "PCs" that they bought!!!

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[welshie]

Yes, entirely possible. Routing will be a challenge when dealing with millions of fiddly small route entries. At the moment, the Internet routes at a very high level using BGP. The ISPs then internally know how to route their own customer allocations. Even when the route advertisements are for large allocations the routeing tables get very large indeed. If you start announcing routes for a single /32 (IPv4) to multiple peers or a /64 (IPv6), the amount of memory needed on the routers becomes rather enormous

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sharks

[thisisauniqueid]

This is obviously the work of sharks [google.com] trained by the US government.

Can the rebels take over the infrastructure?

[Cacadril]

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 har

Re:

[tekiegreg]

I wouldn't keep your hopes up for Syrian Freedom of speech no matter who wins. A lot of these rebels have strong islamist (dare I say Taliban-esque) views as well about freedom of speech. The rebels may not have any interest in restoring Internet either.

Hell hath no fury

[ThatsNotPudding]

like The Onion scorned.

No connection

[Lost Penguin]

I am sure this is not connected to Israel's deniable nuclear weapons...

cable towed

[hesaigo999ca]

There was a problem was cabling in the sea, is that it again???

Misleading

[Vrtigo1]

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 webs