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
A key part of internet access is DNS – Domain Naming Service. It translates URLs like reddit.com to an IP address like 123.101.072.064.
All of internet effectively runs on these IP addresses. If there’s No IP address, then there is no identifiable destination.
If DNS is unavailable then you can’t go to any URL. DNS services are typically provided by very big players which are generally few in number.
So all that the government has to do is to order these players to shut down DNS services and the whole of internet is unavailable.
Another option is to think of internet addresses as houses which can be reached by a network of roads. However, your town has access to only 4 roads. If these 4 roads are blocked, then your townfolks can’t access any of the millions of roads.
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