# Communicate if Your Government Shuts Off Your Internet



## IrritatedWithUS (Jan 9, 2011)

*Scenario: Your government is displeased with the communication going on in your location and pulls the plug on your internet access, most likely by telling the major ISPs to turn off service.

This is what happened in Egypt Jan. 25 prompted by citizen protests, with sources estimating that the Egyptian government cut off approximately 88 percent of the country's internet access. What do you do without internet? Step 1: Stop crying in the corner. Then start taking steps to reconnect with your network. Here's a list of things you can do to keep the communication flowing. Preventive measures

Make your network tangible*

Print out your contact list, so your phone numbers aren't stuck in the cloud. Some mail services like Gmail allow you to export your online contact list in formats that are more conducive to paper, such as CSV or Vcard, and offer step-by-step guides on how to do this.
Broadcast on the radio

*CB Radio*: Short for "Citizens Band" radio, these two-way radios allow communication over short distances on 40 channels. You can pick one up for about $20 to $50 at Radio Shack, and no license is required to operate it.

*Ham radio*: To converse over these radios, also known as "amateur radios," you have to obtain an operator's license from the FCC. Luckily, other Wired How-To contributors have already explained exactly what you need to do to get one and use it like a pro.

*GMRS*: The General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) is a licensed land-mobile FM UHF radio service in the United States available for short-distance two-way communication. It is intended for use by an adult individual who possesses a valid GMRS license, as well as his or her immediate family members... They are more expensive than the walkie talkies typically found in discount electronics stores, but are higher quality.

*Family Radio Service*: The Family Radio Service (FRS) is an improved walkie talkie radio system authorized in the United States since 1996. This personal radio service uses channelized frequencies in the ultra high frequency (UHF) band. It does not suffer the interference effects found on citizens' band (CB) at 27 MHz, or the 49 MHz band also used by cordless phones, toys, and baby monitors.

*Microbroadcasting*: Microbroadcasting is the process of broadcasting a message to a relatively small audience. This is not to be confused with low-power broadcasting. In radio terms, it is the use of low-power transmitters to broadcast a radio signal over the space of a neighborhood or small town. Similarly to pirate radio, microbroadcasters generally operate without a license from the local regulation body, but sacrifice range in favor of using legal power limits.
Phone

*Set up a phone tree*: According to the American Association of University Women, a phone tree is "a prearranged, pyramid-shaped system for activating a group of people by telephone" that can "spread a brief message quickly and efficiently to a large number of people." Dig out that contact list you printed out and follow the steps on the AAUW website to spread the message down your pyramid of contacts.

*Enable Twitter via SMS*: Though the thought of unleashing the Twitter fire hose in your text message inbox may seem horrifying, it would be better than not being able to connect to the outside world at all. The Twitter website has full instructions on how to redirect tweets to your phone.

Alex Jones and infowars.com have a telephone number for people to listen to his radio show by phone, in case the internet goes down, or if you don't have internet. The phone in listen line is 512-646-5000.

*Fax*
If you need to quickly send and receive documents with lengthy or complex instructions, phone conversations may result in misunderstandings, and delivering the doc by foot would take forever. Brush the dust off that bulky old machine, establish a connection by phone first with the recipient to make sure his machine is hooked up, then fax away.

You may not need a fax machine to send or receive faxes if your computer has a dial-up fax application.

*Getting back online*:
While it might be relatively easy for a government to cut connections by leveraging the major ISPs, there are some places they wouldn't get to so readily, like privately-owned networks and independent ISPs.
Find the privately-run ISPs

In densely populated areas, especially in central business districts and city suburbs there are multiple home WiFi networks overlapping each other, some secure, some not. If there is no internet, open up your WiFi by removing password protection: If enough people do this it's feasible to create a totally private WiFi service outside government control covering the CBD, and you can use applications that run Bonjour (iChat on Mac for example) to communicate with others on the open network and send and receive documents. **needs more clarification

If you are a private ISP, it's your time to shine. Consider allowing open access to your Wi-Fi routers to facilitate communication of people around you until the grid is back online.

*Return to dial-up*:
According to an article in the BBC about old tech's role in the Egyptian protests, "Dial-up modems are one of the most popular routes for Egyptians to get back online. Long lists of international numbers that connect to dial-up modems are circulating in Egypt thanks to net activists We Re-Build, Telecomix and others."

Dial-up can be slow. Often, there is a lightweight mobile version of a site that you can load from your desktop browser quickly despite the limitations of dial-up. Examples: mobile.twitter.com, m.facebook.com, m.gmail.com.

*Ad-Hoc Networking*:
Most wireless routers, PCs, laptops, and even some ultramobile devices like cellphones have the ability to become part of an "ad hoc" network, where different "nodes" (all of the devices on the network) share the responsibility of transmitting data with one another. These networks can become quite large, and are often very easy to set up. If used properly by a tech-savvy person, such networks can be used to host temporary websites and chat rooms. There are many internet tutorials on the internet for ad hoc networking, so feel free to google some.

Apple computers tend to have very accessible ad hoc functionality built in, including a pre-installed chat client (iChat) that will automatically set up an ad hoc "Rendezvous" chatroom among anybody on the network, without the need for an external service like AIM or Skype. Ad hoc network-hosting functionality is built in to the Wi-Fi menu.

Windows computers have several third-party ad hoc chat applications available (such as Trillian) and setting up an ad hoc Wi-Fi network is almost as simple as on a Mac.

Linux operating systems, of course, have plenty of third-party apps available, and most distros have ad hoc network-creation support built in.
Get satellite access

You can have very, very slow internet if you have something similiar to an Iridium phone, which would allow you to do dial up at 2400 baud, which at least gives you e-mail. This will also work when your government has shut down GSM and telephone access, and will work pretty much anywhere on the planet. If you're in the right place, get yourself KA-SAT access (KA-SAT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) which is satellite broadband and will not be routed through any internet exchange that certain local governments may monitor or block (unless that government is part of EU or er ... Uncle Sam.
Packet Radio

*Back to the '90s*: There do exist shortwave packet-radio modems. These are also excruciatingly slow, but may get your e-mail out.

*Back to Basics*:
Have an air horn or other loud instrument handy. It may just come down to being able to alert people in your local geographic area, who would otherwise be unaware of an emergency. You may also want to learn a bit about Morse code and have a cheat sheet available.

*Additional Resources*:
The online activist group known as Anonymous has posted a crowd-sourced document titled "20 Ways to Circumvent the Egyptians Governments' Internet Block" that includes specific connectivity details like ham radio frequencies and ip addresses for social networking sites.


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## BasecampUSA (Dec 26, 2010)

We use packet radio (HAM) for e-mail just like the internet.

The modems have improved, but there is a barrier to the speed that still has to be overcome.

A Ham license is not hard to get anymore since they dropped the morse Code requirement back in 2007.

http://www.arrl.org/licensing-education-training


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## jontwork (Apr 6, 2010)

In addition to the methods you mention, of which we have several modes including a Verizon Data card, we also utilize Satellite Internet which has uplinks in various locations i.e. East Coast, Western U.S., Canada and other foreign locations. Our provider is Hughes which also supports many, many emergency management agencies. Likelihood is that they will be active regardless of what is happening wherever.... I like redundancy too.
Regards,


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## CulexPipiens (Nov 17, 2010)

It depends on how they turn the internet off. If you physically shutdown the machines and circuits then the internet is dead. However that also means all of the gov traffic will no longer get through.

More likely they will stop the DNS servers instead which for most people yields the same results.

I'll try to explain it in a non technical way...

Let's say you have a cell phone or even a phone book and you want to call your buddy John Smith. You scroll through your contact list to John Smith and hit dial or you look up his name in the phone book and then call that number. This is what a DNS server is. All devices on the internet web sites, smart phones, your laptop, etc. all have an IP (Internet Protocol) address. It's a series of 4 groups of numbers similar to how your phone number is a series of 10 numbers. DNS (Domain Name Service) servers act like a phone book or contact list. When you type in

```
www.preparedsociety.com
```
 (_* note, I have had to put these web site addresses in a special format to avoid them turning into links and that is why they are shown in a "code" block_) 
your machine does not know where to find it. So it goes to a DNS server and asks it for the IP address. The DNS server responds with the sequence of numbers. Your machine/browser will then try to contact

```
www.preparedsociety.com
```
 but does so behind the scenes using these numbers and the site comes up on your system.

If you turn off the DNS servers then it's like throwing out the phone book and deleting your contact list off your phone. Unless you alreayd know the numbers for that person you can't dial them up anymore. With no DNS, without knowing the IP address your computer can't find the web site anymore.

How can you get around this? The simplest way is to start a list of websites and IP address and then if DNS servers are ever shut down you can simply type in the IP address instead.

You can find the IP address with a variety of tools or simply by getting to a command prompt (windows - Start -> Run -> then type in CMD, mac - Utilities - > Terminal) and typing "ping websitename". For example "ping www.google.com". The quotes are not necessary, just there to show what is the command to type. In the case of goolgle, it comes up with

```
74.125.113.106
```
 and I just type this into my web browser

```
http://74.125.113.106
```
 and google comes up.

Now there is a downside to this. Some servers handle multiple websites and use the incoming name to designate which site to display. No name and the server usually won't give you what you want. This is one such site. The IP for preparedsociety is

```
216.166.0.68
```
 however it simply comes up to a blank screen instead of the actual site. Adding some additional information (the path to the site) will usually then make it work however only the site owners will usually know the exact path. Perhaps if we ask nicely our host will provide the exact IP/path combination so we could still get to this site even if DNS is shutdown.  This isn't a 100% guarantee that you can still get to all sites, but with some foresight and a few minutes of manually looking up some sites you can bypass the most common way of "shutting down the internet" for many sites you use.


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## Turtle (Dec 10, 2009)

If the internet gets shut off, odds are good that there is a SERIOUS problem, and my very last concern will be checking my email or arguing with people about religion or the superiority of the 9mm versus the . 40 cal. I will be too busy grabbing my stuff and running!


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## The_Blob (Dec 24, 2008)

Turtle said:


> If the internet gets shut off, odds are good that there is a SERIOUS problem, and my very last concern will be checking my email or arguing with people about religion or the superiority of the 9mm versus the . 40 cal. I will be too busy grabbing my stuff and running!


phones will be on 'lockdown' as well... remember 9/11 (of course part of that was traffic overload)?


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## TheAnt (Jun 7, 2011)

Turtle said:


> If the internet gets shut off, odds are good that there is a SERIOUS problem, and my very last concern will be checking my email or arguing with people about religion or the superiority of the 9mm versus the . 40 cal. I will be too busy grabbing my stuff and running!


Common! There is always time to argue... especially about the superiority of the .45!

Im with you... I enjoy the value the internet can bring now but when/if its gone I wont shed a tear. :beercheer:


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## bountyhunter26 (Feb 2, 2010)

*no internet*

Here in my neck of the woods we already have a network of comms set up just for that. They might be able to listen but to decode would be futile. Needless to say they probably could DF and find but I highly doubt it.


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## Fn/Form (Nov 6, 2008)

Here is a very interesting concept for the tech savvy:
HSMM-MESH


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