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How to foil a Nationwide Internet Shutdown

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 01/31/2011 - 16:30

 

Thanks to Jeff N. who posted a link to this piece at his Facebook page and Kirby A. who emailed us the same link.

Lifehacker posts a not too complicated discussion of what the Egyptian government has done to internet connections within Egypt, and a guide for getting around it.

As usual, click on the photo to link up to the entire post.

 

How to Foil a Nationwide Internet Shutdown

 

 

The Egyptian government cut internet connections across their country to silence protests, leaving nearly all of its citizens without online access. But they weren't entirely successful. When governments shut down broadband and mobile connections, here's what to do.

What's Going on Now?

If you haven't been keeping up with the story, here's the gist. Citizens across Egypt are protesting their government in unprecedented numbers, and its believed that the internet played a major role in the protests. So what did the Egyptian government do? First, they started blocking domain name servers (DNS)—the phone book of the internet—but citizens circumvented this limitation by using proxy servers. In reaction, the government cut broadband connections to the web and forced mobile providers to do the same. For more details, read Gizmodo's take on how Egypt turned off the internet. The result: a nationwide internet blackout that's preventing Egyptian citizens from communicating online. To put it bluntly, this sucks. But it's still not good enough. We're going to look at how Egyptian citizens can (and are) circumventing the problem.