Syria cut off from Internet: Monitoring firms

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Syria has been cut off from the Internet, technology companies which monitor web traffic reported on  Thursday, as the United States (US) government blamed the embattled regime of Mr Bashar al-Assad for the move.

Akamai, a firm which monitors global traffic, said traffic stopped from 1026 GMT (6.26pm Singapore time), and that this supports the observation from another IT firm, Renesys, "that Syria is effectively off the Internet."

Renesys said in a blog posting that its monitoring showed "Syria's international Internet connectivity shut down". Renesys chief technology officer James Cowie said: "Looking closely at the continuing Internet blackout in Syria, we can see that trace routes into Syria are failing, exactly as one would expect for a major outage."

Mr Cowie said in a blog posting that "there are a few Syrian networks that are still connected to the Internet... but the originator of the routes is actually Tata Communications. These are potentially offshore, rather than domestic, and perhaps not subject to whatever kill switch was thrown today within Syria".