Read more: Eight things you didn鈥檛 know about the internet
Almost certainly not. Much of the infrastructure 鈥� the servers, cabling and satellites, and the internet service providers (ISPs) that run them 鈥� is in private hands. A government might be able to mandate that ISPs in their territory be shut down, but people could still receive data through satellite links controlled by companies not answerable to that government. To extend that shutdown across national borders is barely conceivable. 鈥淥ne very powerful government could have strong effects on their own country, but it would be very difficult to do on a worldwide basis,鈥� says Milton Mueller of the international .
Mueller says he finds it hard to think of a reason why we might want to shut down the internet. Even the biggest cyber-attacks cause much less economic damage than closing the internet would. What鈥檚 more, he points out, malicious attempts to disable the internet are testimony to the difficulty of the task: the biggest attack in history came in February 2007, and you probably didn鈥檛 even notice.
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This attack attempted to overwhelm the 13 鈥渞oot name servers鈥� that carry the directory of all the internet addresses in use worldwide 鈥� data vital to the smooth running of the net. Two servers, both in the US, were affected, but with 11 others untouched, the attack failed.
ICANN has now begun to implement a further safeguard system, known as , by which each of the internet鈥檚 13 root name servers also acts as a duplicate, or mirror, for some of the others. 鈥淎 root server in California can be mirrored in Taiwan or the Middle East,鈥� Mueller says. 鈥淏y playing tricks with the addressing, we effectively have hundreds of these root servers.鈥�
And if cyber-assaults get nowhere in shutting down the net, physical attacks on the infrastructure are unlikely to fare much better. You would have to plant bombs to destroy undersea cables, before launching missile attacks on the root name servers that are spread around the planet. 鈥淭hen the internet will be the least of your worries,鈥� says Mueller. 鈥淲e鈥檙e talking about full-fledged war.鈥�
The internet is here to stay. Get used to it.
