In recent events, Belarus was reported to have shut down the country’s Internet. How does that happen? Does the government control all the servers, or so they have a kill switch somewhere for all the service providers? What about mobile internet? Logistically, it doesn’t make sense.
In: Technology
The internet is just a big bunch of computers and networks connected to each other around the world. In theory, the internet has multiple paths to connect the same end points, and uses protocols designed to route around any issues to achieve that connection however possible. In theory, anyone can build their own internet infrastructure and run their own connections.
In practice, much of the important infrastructure requires massive financial resources and technical expertise. There are only so many cables connecting your country to other countries, and this not only requires massive business investment but also agreements between the political entities. There are only so many cables connecting one residence to another, which again requires massive business investment, and most countries have regulations ie. the government controlling what you can and can’t do. Therefore there are only so many ISPs providing those services to customers.
In practice, the government only needs to control either this critical physical infrastructure directly, or the ability to exercise control over the few companies providing the services (whether that be financial, regulatory, legal or otherwise), to have control of that country’s internet.
It’s rarely going to be a single physical “internet kill switch”, but a process of contacting various major companies controlling the infrastructure. And most countries are usually content to just (“just”…) control the flow information via firewalls, block-lists, DNS record tomfoolery, censorship and so on rather than kill the internet outright. Citizens who lose their internet might riot at the obvious government interference, but if you only block certain websites or filter certain keywords you have plausible deniability.
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