When in your country will turn off the Internet?

"I woke up in the morning, and the Internet was over." The guys from Hacker translated the article by renesys specialists, who estimated the risks of disconnecting from the global network, no less than whole countries. Based on the "Arab Spring".

Original pictures

What are the risks in your country (if you live in the wrong big safe hulk - at the top right of the map)?
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High	Significant	Low	Conditionally absent
AD, AI, AN, AW, AX, BB, BQ, BT, CF, CI, CK, CU, DJ, DM, ET, FO, GD, GF, GL, GM, GN, GP, GY, IO, JE, KM, KN, KP, LS, LY, MC, MF, MH, ML, MM, MR, NF, NR, PF, PM, PW, RE, SB, SO, SR, SS, ST, SX, SY, SZ, TC, TD, TK, TL, TM, TN, TO, UZ, VA, WF, YE	AE, AG, AM, AZ, BF, BI, BJ, BM, BN, BO, BS, BW, BY, BZ, CD, CG, CM, CW, DO, EG, FJ, FM, GA, GE, GG, GI, GQ, GU, HT, IM, IR, JM, JO, KG, KY, LA, LK, LR, MA, ME, MG, MN, MO, MQ, MT, MU, MV, MW, NA, NC, NE, OM, PG, PK, PY, QA, RW, SA, SD, SL, SM, SV, TG, TJ, TT, UG, UY, VG, VI, VU, WS	AF, AL, AO, BA, BD, BH, CL, CN, CO, CR, CY, DZ, EC, EE, GH, GR, GT, HN, HR, HU, IL, IN, IQ, IS, KE, KH, KR, KW, KZ, LB, LI, LT, LU, LV, MD, MK, MX, MZ, NG, NI, NP, PA, PE, PR, PS, PT, RS, SI, SK, TH, TR, TW, TZ, VE, VN, ZA, ZM, ZW	AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, ID, IE, IT, JP, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PH, PL, RO, RU , SE, SG, UA, US

So how difficult is it to turn off the Internet in the whole country?

Question number one, which we received after our analysis of the Egyptian and Syrian scenarios of the Internet blockade, is really interesting: if the Internet is so stable that it is insured against wars and disasters, how can it be finished in a single state?

The key to Internet survivability is its decentralization. But is this decentralization everywhere represented equally? In some countries, access to international resources and services is strictly regulated. In some states, there can be only one or two companies that have state licenses for the provision of telecommunications services, in particular, voice services and Internet access services (both from the region to the outside and to the region from the outside world). And the law obliges local market players to use these transit companies.

In such conditions, allowing and prohibiting access to certain Internet data is an almost trivial task for the governments of these countries: make several phone calls, or turn off the power through a couple of central institutions, and your region (for legitimate reasons) is disconnected from the global network. Of course, this level of centralization poses very serious tasks for the regulator (government) - a decisive hypothetical adversary who knows the key points of the country's Internet infrastructure can cause much more serious damage, disrupting the work of a few central hubs and channels.

It seems quite reasonable that over the past decade, most countries have advanced in diversifying their Internet infrastructure. Sometimes this happens by itself, as a side effect of economic development and the levers of a competitive market: in the struggle to provide citizens with cheaper international Internet access, companies are setting up new external channels of communication.

But even in cases of government participation, when it acts as a regulator, allowing (or stimulating) the formation of multiple direct connections with international providers, we are faced with new problems. What kind Diversification of international channels often goes to the detriment of channels of existing providers of "telecom" (as a rule, these are old telephone companies owned by the state). Without any seriously developed legal framework and adequate guidance from the regulator, the telecommunications industry with a large number of strong but fairly small players has been rebuilding its infrastructures too slowly and for a long time and this process can take a long, long time.

Above, on the World Map, countries were painted in accordance with the diversification of their external international telecommunication channels. We conducted our “census” for each state based on the data of the routing tables of the national providers that have direct connections (as seen in the routing table) to foreign telecom operators.

As a first evaluation metric, a slice, this method is very good for many reasons: it is easy to calculate and fairly objective (the telecom operator either has international channels of communication with foreign transit operators and this can be seen in the routing tables or not). Conventionally, this can be represented as the number capacity of telephone lines or as resistance to infrastructural attacks and the required equipment required for processing intra-zone and global Internet traffic.

We estimate your risks of possible disconnection as high if you have only one or two “border” companies. The above list of 61 countries includes such countries as Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkmenistan, Libya, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, Myanmar and Yemen. If in your country there are less than 10 providers serving transit international traffic, then our assessment indicates significant risks of disrupting Internet access. Ten providers are, in fact, the threshold value below which additional infrastructure risks exist, be it common (joint) channels or the only data link operator that owns a significant share of the infrastructure on the basis of which various providers provide their services. This category of countries includes 72 states, including Oman, Benin, Botswana, Rwanda, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uganda, Armenia and Iran. “Turning off” of such countries will not be a trivial task, but you cannot call it a super-task either. Egypt also falls into this category; Mubarak's government took only a few days to track down and finish off the last channels, but, ultimately, the Internet blockade was carried out.

In the case when independent operators are more than 10, but less than 40, your risks are much lower and the likelihood of such a scenario is very low for you. With certain efforts, it will take days or weeks to implement such a scenario in your country, but it will not be very easy to maintain and maintain such a blockade. In a similar position, there are 58 countries in the list from the worst position (Bahrain) to the best (Mexico). India, Israel, Ecuador, Chile, Vietnam and (perhaps it will surprise you) China. All listed countries are included in the category of “conditionally low risk” countries.

The example of Afghanistan shows us that sometimes the diversification of Internet channels is a by-product, a satellite of regional fragmentation and difficult technological problems. You will not believe it, but the government in Kabul is unable to turn off the Internet because it is built from disparate services from various operators of satellite communication channels, as well as from Uzbek, Iranian, Pakistani providers of land transit traffic.

Finally, if you have more than 40 border operators, you are most likely extremely resistant to disruption of communication channels. There are too many ways in and out of the country, too many independent suppliers who will have to be forced or whose work will have to be broken in order to cause a telecommunications failure on a national scale. The government can significantly degrade the quality of access, but there will still be a very large pool of sustainable channels and routes for global Internet traffic. This category of countries includes the largest Internet economies: Canada, USA, the Netherlands (etc.). About 32 countries.

So, can the Egyptian or Syrian scenario happen in your country? Fortunately not. However, to us, at Renesys, our clients ask this question quite often, every time when they choose a country in which it is advisable to place their new data centers.

Governments encouraging foreign direct investment in ITC, when heading for the International Telecommunication Union conference in Dubai, should bear this in mind. The risks to the stability and reliability of the Internet are followed by the political risks of losing Internet connection arising from excessive diligence in controlling traffic, as companies consider them making their investments in the global cloud infrastructure.

PS Translated for the sake of against copy-paste from Hacker and in connection with additions from 3/12/12
PPS The last paragraph with threats in a beautiful diplomatic language was very difficult to translate into Russian.