Statement of the ALAC regarding current situation in Egypt (Draft)

The ALAC is concerned by the impact of developments in Egypt on the ordinary Internet user. In the light of ICANN's responsibility for IP address  and AS number policy, and its core value of 'preserving and enhancing the operational stability, reliability, security, and global interoperability of the Internet', we endorse the ISOC statement and Q&A as expressed at http://isoc.org/wp/newsletter/?p=3100and below:

Egypt Internet Shutdown Q&A

29th January 2011

What has happened to communications in Egypt?

At this point (ref CircleID), 91% of Egypt’s Internet networks are down. Virtually all of Egypt’s Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.

According to internet monitoring firm Renesys, at 22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet’s global routing table, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt’s service providers.

The Egyptian government apparently asked the four local Egyptian ISPs to switch off their services.  Network addresses within Egypt became unreachable as the ISPs withdrew their announcements from the global routing table. Domain name service has also been affected; for details see this posting from ICANN:

The combination of the network shut down and unreachable domain names resulted in the disappearance of Egyptian names and numbers from the Internet. This has, effectively, taken Egypt of the Internet, cutting off its citizens from modern communications tools.

Some mobile services were also affected. In addition, it is reported that one small ISP remains functional  – this service provider connects the Egyptian stock exchange.

What is the impact for businesses and citizens inside Egypt?

People and businesses within the country that relied on the four main ISPs have been cut off, leaving many millions of Egyptians without internet access. International network operators with Egyptian presence confirm that they have been instructed to shut down their operations.  As a modern society, over 20% of Egypt’s population of 80Million were online, with over 4Milion Facebook users. Not just individuals but businesses, schools and government offices are currently offline.

The Internet shutdown will have a significant impact on the economy and on the ability of individual citizens to earn a living. And, as can be expected the Egyptian stock Exchange, EGX, whilst still online, saw a sharp fall in value (see below chart – source EGX).

Signed: The At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC)