[samkater]

Does anybody have good overview/resources to learn more about how the internet "pipes" are configured at a national level? I can understand conceptually how a government could disable internet connectivity to _outside_ the country by having some control over the connections that cross borders. _Inside_ the country you would need to have control over the internal routing mechanisms as well, assuming the DNS lookups could all happen in-country? (this is not my field/I don't know the correct terminology).

How would people with satellite internet connectivity be impacted (I assume there is some government entity able to turn off a satellite, but that probably only applies to a few countries in the world?)?

EDIT: I should have thought about this for a few more minutes before posting the original question - the shutting down ISPs is glaringly obvious in hindsight... I am still interested in hearing people's thoughts on satellite internet, though. HN occasionally talks about initiatives to have LEO satellites provide internet access. If the people running the satellite were outside of your jurisdiction, it would seem like these instances would be mitigated for many places in the world?

[kortilla]

Government just calls ISPs and tells them to shut stuff down or face charges.

> there is some government entity able to turn off a satellite, but that probably only applies to a few countries in the world

A satellite internet provider can’t provide service to a country without the complying with its government rules (assuming there is any kind of trade relationship between the country and the country of the satellite internet provider).

[lotsofpulp]

> assuming there is any kind of trade relationship between the country and the country of the satellite internet provider

Assuming the other country has something worth trading for. I imagine Uganda wouldn’t really have anything to bargain with the US if a US satellite internet company rejected Uganda’s request.

[xxpor]

https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/africa/east-africa/uganda

In case anyone else is interested in the actual data for that.

[bluGill]

Problem is why would a satellite internet provider provide service? Money is the obvious answer, but how will customers get money to them?

I could just see them continuing to provide service at no cost as a gesture of goodwill (particularly if their satellite covers another country), but only so long as limited customers use it that way. They won't be doing upgrades though. And it isn't hard to figure out who is getting internet in this way and physically confiscate their equipment.

[rhino369]

Worst case, Uganda could just jam the satellites.

[stretchcat]

From what I understand, the US military is a major customer of commercial communication satellites. Jamming those satellites could be a very bad idea, regardless of who you were intending to inconvenience.

[toast0]

Especially in a country with less infrastructure, there's usually only a small number of mobile carriers that service the vast majority of the internet use; sometimes the government only calls the mobile carriers, and ignores the wired carriers and dialup ISPs.

[rank0]

If you can't route traffic outside of the country, it doesn't matter if you can resolve domains. You still won't be able to reach your destination IP.

DNS lookups still rely on your ability to route traffic outside your country anyways.

Neither of the above points even matter if your government can control the ISPs operating in its border. Government says to ISPs: "cease operation or well put you all in prison"

[bluGill]

You replace the root DNS servers with your own. It isn't that hard, if you are reading this you should be able to figure out how to do it in less than a day.

Google.com returns an ip of your favored in country search engine - most likely people get a https error when trying to go there, but those that ignore the error find search works for allowed things and the rest learn to use the favored search engine.

You - as a national actor - can easily cut your country off from the internet while still getting many of the benefits of the internet.

[xxpor]

Another option is turning off the upstream side of eyeball connections. Basically, shutting off DLAMS, CMTS, etc.