[NA-Discuss] Unrest continues to be met with Internet lockdown

Wed Feb 16 18:48:47 UTC 2011

On 2/16/11 1:16 PM, Beau Brendler wrote:

> ... call me crazy, is there something we could do/create/publish, given our technical and political expertise, that might somehow help users find their way around an Internet block? Information always seems to find a way...is there an alternative conduit? Or some sort of technical/legal intersection that would give us a lever on which to craft a statement?

Well, I'm writing a recommendation for registry operators that out of 
band communications in the form of:

o V/SAT reserve capability

o ATA reserve capability

be planned-in to the registry technical capacity.

For most of 2005-2009 I traveled through about 40 states and several 
provinces and retained operational capability through a V/SAT link to 
my servers in Maine.

Had the EAN (Egyptian Academic Network) used local V/SAT (I observed 
dishes with video reception-only arms on many roofs in Cairo in 
November 2008) uplink the issue of .eg zone expiry at the secondaries, 
the only issue ICANN actually took notice of, would not have arisen.

The most robust plan would include address allocation through two or 
more satellite communications vendor, e.g., Arabsat _and_ Nilesat.

Additionally, the POTS fabric and good old (overlooked by Howard Dean 
and subsequent "broadband policy" accessibility advocates) 56kB modems 
offer another low cost (other than the tip/rs232 skillset maintenance) 
means for zone file update during packet network disruption.

The later was used within 48 hours of the prefix withdrawal of the 
27th, reported by Al Jazeera and others, though for SMS-voice relay 
(speak-to-tweet) [1] and not specifically for data/analog-data/packet 
relay.

The first is in every first-responder network assistance kit. If we 
look at planned network failure as a kind of unplanned network failure 
(earthquake, etc.), then "advice for first responders" looks a lot 
like "advice for residents".

The legal lever was handed out in yesterday's statement by the US SoS 
[1], for those that find some utility in that jurisdictional 
reference. There have been similar statements made with other 
jurisdictional associations, e.g. the UN SecGen's statement that 
"freedom of expression should be fully respected" in Egypt.

Oh. Least I forget. Not crazy. But as you've observed, several 
opinions exist, along with untested assertions.

Eric

[1] 
http://signalnews.com/google-twitter-give-egyptians-an-outlet-on-internet176
[2] 
http://wampum.wabanaki.net/content/secretary-state-hillary-rodham-clinton-net