How Could the Internet for an Entire Country, Like Syria, Be Cut?

(Image: Shutterstock.com)

On Thursday, the plug for Internet access was pulled in Syria. But how would such connectivity be cut for the whole conflict-embroiled country in the first place?

As of right now, it is unconfirmed who officially launched the attack on the Internet. Activists are pointing their fingers at President Bashar Assad, while the government has denied these claims and said it was rebels who are responsible.

Matthew Prince with the company CloudFlare, a website domain name server and content delivery service, explained yesterday in a blog post not only how this would happen but also who who might be responsible for cutting off access. First, he discussed how Syria's Internet is run:

The exclusive provider of Internet access in Syria is the state-run Syrian Telecommunications Establishment. Their network AS number is AS29386. The following network providers typically provide connectivity from Syria to the rest of the Internet: PCCW and Turk Telekom as the primary providers with Telecom Italia and TATA for additional capacity. When the outage happened, the BGP routes to Syrian IP space were all simultaneously withdrawn from all of Syria's upstream providers. The effect of this is that networks were unable to route traffic to Syrian IP space, effectively cutting the country off the Internet.

Basically, Syria's one autonomous system (AS) controls all the routing decisions for the entire country.

When it comes to physically cutting off the Internet, Prince explained that Syria has four cables -- three undersea and one over-land -- that connect it to the 'net. He said it is unlikely these cables were cut given that all four would have to go for the entire country to experience an outage.

"The systematic way in which routes were withdrawn suggests that this was done through updates in router configurations, not through a physical failure or cable cut," Prince wrote.

This would suggest the government was involved in cutting off the Internet through its AS not "terrorists [targeting] Internet lines," as Syrian Minister of Information said.

Engineers at CloudFlare recorded a video showing routes being cut. As a commenter explained, the graph shows how Syria's AS, which is represented in the video by a red dot, cut off all Internet traffic routes in less than two minutes:

As you can see at the end of the video, there was one link remaining, but Prince wrote this was an anomaly. He said CloudFlare confirmed it was not active.

According to the Associated Press, some phone lines throughout the country were cut as well. As of Friday, the Internet remained down but some landlines were reportedly working sporadically.

Syrian authorities previously have cut Internet and telephones in areas ahead of military operations.

Regime forces have suffered a string of tactical defeats in recent weeks, losing air bases and other strategic facilities. The government may be trying to blunt additional rebel offensives by hampering communications.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland on Thursday condemned what she called the regime's "assault" on Syrians' ability to communicate with each other and express themselves. She said the move spoke to a desperate attempt by Assad to cling to power.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Featured image via Shutterstock.com.