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
There are different ways to think of the internet depending on how you approach it. It can be a data centric view (ie data connected and interlinked) or network function centric (routing tables, network configuration etc). At the end of the day, though, the internet has a physical manifestation – there must be physical wires, servers, switches, access points etc. Access to the internet service must go through some physical infrastructure – phone wires, networking cables, optical fiber or cell phone towers.
Governments generally have direct or indirect control over all physical infrastructure in their own country. They can either physically take over and turn these things off or, more easily, tell the operators to turn it off under government authority, threat of punishment or jail etc.
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