Egypt has pulled the plug on the internet in a bid to stop social media sites from fanning the flames of protest.

According to web traffic watchers, the authorities, which control the relatively few fibre optic networks in Egypt, plunged the country into digital darkness shortly after midnight Cairo time.
The unprecedented move comes amid fears that protesters calling for an end to President Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30-year rule were using Twitter and other services to organise their movements.

“Virtually all of Egypt's internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide,” said James Cowie in a blog of the internet intelligence gatherer Rensys.

“This is a completely different situation from the modest internet manipulation that took place in Tunisia, where specific routes were blocked, or Iran, where the internet stayed up in a rate-limited form designed to make internet connectivity painfully slow. The Egyptian government's actions have essentially wiped their country from the global map.”

The four main service providers - Etisalat Misr, Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya and Telecom Egypt – ceased working at 12.34am, and experts believe that the order was given by central government.

According to traffic management company Arbor, Egypt has a small number of data routes into and out of the country and the companies that own or run the technologies are under strict licenses from the government.

"It's probably a phone call that goes out to half a dozen folks who enter a line on a router configuration file and hit return," chief scientist for Arbor Networks Craig Labovitz told the Associated Press. "It's like programming your TiVo - you have things that are set up and you delete one. It's not high-level programming."

According to Rensys, one of the only carriers still up and running is Noor Group, which still has live routes to its Egyptian customers, with inbound transit from Telecom Italia, possibly because it is the carrier used by the Egyptian Stock Exchange.

Read more: Egypt switches off the internet | Security | News | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/36 ... z1CLJMwqNQ

The real problem is that Egypt is close to a revolution. With food riots last year, sectarian violence rampant, corruption is mentioned Egypt has had unrest since Tunisia's revolution.

I've heard that residents are forming a human chain around the national museum to prevent looting.

Got a friend flying back from South Africa, who was scheduled for a stop in Cairo before coming on to France.
She's been asking her fella for updates - which he can't give, of course.
We shall wait and see, I s'pose.

The Internet is back on in cities across Egypt.
It's good to be back in contact with at least one person I know there.
Hopefully I'll hear from the others soon.

Mark

Yes but cant President Mubarak call you anyway?

Yes, but then he'd ask if he can use the spare bedroom for a while and you know how much of a pain that is....

It will depend on if he brings his entourage with him?