The best way to understand the inner workings of the Internet is to see it as a massive network branching out into several smaller networks. These become increasingly smaller, until the end user is reached. If a stem of that network is damaged or severed for political or strategic reasons, as seen in the recent uprisings in North Africa, large portions of the population will go offline.
Currently, the online world is supported by a set of underground and underwater cables containing optical fiber, which conduct light pulses traveling through strings of glass. Since nothing travels faster than the speed of light, these cables are the fastest means through which data can travel across the globe. While a satellite connection would be more difficult to sabotage, it would also be significantly slower.
Concerns regarding the reliability of underwater cables came to the fore of national news in 2008, following a mass cable disruption. Internet access in the Middle East and South Asia was interrupted when several major underwater communication cables to these regions were coincidentally severed.
In terms of physical infrastructure, nevertheless, the Internet remains mostly fault-proof. Cable cuts occur frequently, mostly as a result of cables rubbing against the sea floor. However, most Internet users don’t notice that they’re happening, as connections can be easily rerouted. The number of optical fibre cables and satellite connections allowing the world to stay online means that any efforts to knock the entire web down would require a massive amount of time and coordination. Despite the recent catastrophic earthquake and subsequent tsunami, Northeastern Japan still has Internet access.
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As the conspiracy theories surrounding the 2008 incident in Asia would suggest, the greatest threat to Internet access is not poor infrastructure, but rather the human factor. The circumstances were suspicious, not because the cables were severed, but because these major, geographically related cables were all damaged at the same time. While the servers, cables, and routers themselves may be reliable, they still can be shut off in light of political, personal, or economic difficulties.
This is why in Libya, for instance, the government controls the only Internet service provider, and shut it down as soon as the recent popular disturbances began. In Egypt, there are about four Internet providers. The government interrupted connections going through the country’s main IXP in Cairo to cut off Internet access across the country, using a physical shut down, and political pressure. IXPs are Internet Exchange Points, which Internet service providers use to link up to the Internet at large.
While a country like Canada has several IXPs, Egypt only has two. The second, which remained active throughout the Egyptian uprising, and is mostly used by corporations, was not affected. The issue is that Egypt’s small network makes Internet access highly centralized, and therefore vulnerable to political pressure.
This is only one example of the wider concern for net neutrality. The cost of laying cables and managing these networks is so high that it can only be taken up by large corporations. It raises the issue of whether these corporations might exploit their control over large chunks of Internet access to restrict freedom of speech, and censor unwanted content on the web.
While the online world can rest assured that the servers, cables and routers themselves are largely reliable and resilient, they still can be shut off in light of political, personal or economic difficulties. In Canada and the U.S., as in many other countries, a highly decentralized system assures that data flow is hard to tamper with. Networks will always have their vulnerabilities and choke points — in this case, humans seem to be the culprits.
