Egypt unplugs the Internet, and creative minds adapt...

Egypt unplugged the Internet on Friday January 28th (SANS Internet Storm Center) and it didn't take long for people to find a way around.  The Egyptian government shut down DNS service and promptly followed by ordering all ISPs to block routing of networks in and out of the country.  Though this may stop the vast majority of traffic, it has arguably hurt the regime more than it has helped.  Clever individuals have began circumventing the block. Good list here: http://wikileaks.blogsport.de/2011/01/29/18-ways-to-circumvent-the-egyptians-governments-internet-block/

Individuals outside of Egypt have set up ham radio relay sites outside the country.  Anyone with ham gear and some EE know-how can get a radio link out:

• Egypt hams are on 7.050-7.200 MHz LSB
• #hamradio frequencies for #egypt http://slink.us?ls PLEASE SPREAD IRC: http://slink.us?lt
• Ham Radio Software software for PC, Mac and Linux http://www.hamsphere.com Communicate w/ #egypt
• 0m band, 7.050-7.20­0 MHz LSB, 318.5 degrees (northwest­/north from cairo) Ham Radio Operators

 There are always telephone modems, remember those?:

• Nour DSL is still working in Egypt, Dial up with 0777 7776 or 07777 666
• There is an Old DSL Dialup 24564600
• We are now providing dialup modem service at +46850009990. user/pass: telecomix/telecomix (only for #egypt, respect that PLEASE!).
• People of Egypt ONLY! Use this dial-up provided by friends in France to go online: +33172890150 (login ‚toto‘ password ‚toto‘)

Aparrently, there are people bringing in Sat phones to provide Internet connectivity as well: 

 Activists have also begun smuggling satellite phones into the country and have gone so far as to establish an independent “mesh” of connections, forming what Deibert called an “essentially an autonomous internet, not routed through the Egyptian network.”

 Read more: cbc.ca: Busting Egypt's web blackout

And there's SMS proxy (manually) and Internet proxy service (if you can get connectivity):

• Send SMS reports to +1 949 209 7559 and they will retweet for you. Please spread to those in #Egypt on battlefield
• Help the Egypt Revolutionaries by overcoming the Firewall https://www.accessnow.org/proxy-cloud\
• https://www.accessnow.org/
• https://www.mousematrix.com/

This tactic of blocking the Internet is getting old and stale.  Iran did it last year, and it happened in a couple other small circumstances prior to that.  People and business are finding ways around a government arbitrarily cutting the Internet.  Each time it happens there are lessons learned and resiliency built in to the system to mitigate this kind of service loss. 

This certainly has a much more sour sound to it now doesn't it?:
Obama 'Internet kill switch' plan approved by US Senate panel: President could get power to turn off Internet

This from Zerohedge.com:
Egypt tweets mapped in real time:

http://www.mibazaar.com/egypt.html 

Very cool.