Egypt Shut Down All Internet Traffic for 5 Days

Many engineers and computer specialists didn't think this could be effectively done within any country. And the way it was done astounded many technical specialists worldwide. It was thought that this might be managed in a place, with more government control like Syria. But it was also thought that it could not be managed within Egypt because of the ownership structure of all aspects of the internet from PCs to Servers, to fiber optic lines etc. So, it was a really great surprise that it was so effectively done. If you want to read more about this from the New York Times please read by clicking the following:

Egypt Leaders Found ‘Off’ Switch for Internet

begin quote from above nytimes article:

The strength of the Internet is that it has no single point of failure, in contrast to more centralized networks like the traditional telephone network. The routing of each data packet is handled by a web of computers known as routers, so that in principle each packet might take a different route. The complete message or document is then reassembled at the receiving end.
Yet despite this decentralized design, the reality is that most traffic passes through vast centralized exchanges — potential choke points that allow many nations to monitor, filter or in dire cases completely stop the flow of Internet data. end quote.