[whisk]

I have read some stories during the year without Internet in Xinjiang.

In fact people can still connect to local network then, they just disconnected the link from province level ISP to Internet.

Some young mans built local websites provides movie, softwares downloads, news and bbs inside the LAN. They travels to nearest town outside Xinjiang every week by train, download new resources in net bar, bring them back in hard disk and update their websites. Nobody knows how long will the disconnection last and somebody prepared to maintain the LAN from long years. It makes me recall 20 years ago I access contents on Internet through CD-ROM in magazines.

In the end, the Internet recovered and these websites soon disappeared.

[themodelplumber]

Wow. I love hearing about the persistence under those conditions. Reminds me a bit of what I've heard of Cuba, a semi-sneakernet setup.

[rqs]

I'm not local, but actually, there are many stories published by locals during that time, most of it are written in Chinese of course.

You can still found some of it by googling keyword "新疆断网", and Google Translate them if you interested to read.

In summary: In the first few days, people miss the access; Then, they built their own network, providing news, BBS, downloading and even online gaming services etc.

If they had enough time, I could assume they will build a complete alternative of China's Internet, just like what happened in the China's Internet then the access to the true Internet is limited.

But "enough time" is what they don't have, when the access been restored, most local websites are faded.

[girvo]

It’s even cooler than that. In Havana, there’s a local network via Ethernet cables strung between buildings, that you can use hacked video game consoles to play against others on, among other things!