this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
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Very theoretical question.

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[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 24 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But you could still connect with IP addresses and only the name resolution would get affected right? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 3 points 2 months ago

Yes, good luck remember thousands of IPS.

Also, no, all modern websites depends on external resources based on names, all websites would be crippled.

[–] cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Internet access could be disabled in a couple of ways

  • By ISPs
  • By Cloud providers as more and more people are using them
  • By government organisations
  • etc.

But the whole concept of internet will carry on IMO. After all, its just a large LAN.

[–] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Technically it's a bunch of LANs that are connected to each other

[–] Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 months ago

A Wider and less Local LAN, if you will

[–] Ardyssian@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] limer@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Solar flairs are the sword of Damocles hanging over all the internet. It’s only a matter of when the next https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

It may be a few decades away, or next week. But everyone will get a notice of two days that all online data and communications will be destroyed , or not available at all, for at least a year

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] limer@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’m pretty sure my subconscious meant to type it, for unknown reasons. And I’m not going to change it. Maybe I want the internet to go out with style

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

πŸ˜†πŸ‘πŸ‘ So it should!

[–] bizarroland@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The internet is very resilient at this point.

You would probably need to drop a couple of nukes or orchestrate a combined strategic takeout of thousands of sites

[–] andrewta@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Instructions unclear: nuked every city.

[–] bizarroland@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] sopularity_fax@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 months ago

Please be the chilling now, here today

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago
[–] GiorgioPerlasca@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago

You can isolate the networks that are part of the Internet by switching off the submarine communication cables. They are considered a military asset by the countries and defended as such.

[–] redlemace@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

It might die slowly if you take down all root dns servers and keep them off long enough.

Maybe if you disturb BGP between isp's enough

but I can't see how either can be done, it's quite resilliant

[–] twinnie@feddit.uk 7 points 2 months ago

It used to be possible as networks could advertise that they owned IP ranges that they didn’t actually own using BGP, which is what’s used for high level routing. This is what China did around 2010 where they allegedly routed all the internet traffic in the world through China for like 10 minutes. I guess somebody could do that and then just drop every packet.

I expect that’s not possible anymore though, but I’ve been out the game a while so I don’t know for sure.

[–] m33@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago

Just mess with BGP announcements

[–] Turd_Ferg@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 months ago

There is an episode of The IT Crowd that explains how to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vywf48Dhyns

[–] Dragonfruit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 2 months ago

I mean I feel like it's kind of hard to define what "the internet" really is because it's so decentralized. Like if you cut all the undersea cables and split the internet into multiple parts, which part is the real internet?

And even if all the commercial ISPs went away, people could still connect their networks together through phone lines or mesh networking so it would be hard to say the internet was really gone

[–] 0xtero@beehaw.org 5 points 2 months ago

Depends how you define "the Internet". But if couple of big tier1 carriers null route their BGP, the Internet becomes more or less unusable for large parts, especially now that most of it is synonymous to 5-6 large websites and SaaS providers.

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 4 points 2 months ago

That's an excellent idea! It's a pretty badly failed experiment.

[–] MTK@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

So many ways, it's almost unbelievable that it still works

[–] Faux@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago

If states isolated their network infrastructure from other states, the essence of international network would be lost.

Each country would have their own intranet, like Kwangmyong in the DPRK.

[–] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah, just unplug your modem.

[–] IWW4@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago

Practically it is not possible in the vast majority of countries in the world.

I guess if there is no electrical power In the entire country..

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

with traffic whitelists

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

With a sufficient amount of explosives everything is possible