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by wickedwillie on February 24th, 2005

wickedwillie

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Is it possible to shut down the Internet world wide?

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Answers. 26 helpful answers below.

  • by Karl Plesz on February 25th, 2005

    Karl Plesz

    The Internet is a mesh network with redundancy on a scale that would boggle your mind. Physically it would be difficult to turn the Internet off, barring a world-wide catastrophe.

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  • by bdby112002 on October 27th, 2005

    bdby112002

    While not quite impossible it is VERY unprobable. The chance of a virus spreading THAT fast is slim. Since there are so many servers it almost is impossible. While way back when it might have been possible but since computers were so new there werent people who could spread viruses like that and now that they can there are too many things keeping that from happening. I am going to have to go with no it cannot.

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  • by David Turman on October 4th, 2005

    David Turman

    It is possible if a script/worm/virus could spread so fast that all the safeguards are caught unaware and it got to the spine of the internet. But that is what backups are for; restoration. But it is also possible to severly damage internet usage if you attack a huge server farm. That is why google.com keep the location of it's servers top secret. I imagine because they are aware of the damage potential and the headaches it would cause. But even then we'd simply go to another search engine.

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  • by MaWW N. on September 30th, 2009

    MaWW N.

    Yes,
    press this button:
    http://www.turnofftheinternet.com/

    :D

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  • by pixxel on November 15th, 2006

    pixxel

    we are discussing the possibilities of viruses shutting down the internet, but how about malicious physical forces such as military or governmental agencies? Would it be possible to seize all DNS apparatus and literally paralyze the internet?.. of course local DNS would still be running but ... for how long would it remain current if its head were chopped off?

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  • by beatnic on October 29th, 2006

    beatnic

    I know this sounds ignorant but its just cause im not good with computers and stuff like t hat soo umm, couldnt you physically destroy the dsn servers with like an explosive device... like if you did that to all of them (13) couldnt you really badly mess up the internet???

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  • by beatnic on October 29th, 2006

    beatnic

    I know this sounds ignorant but its just cause im not good with computers and stuff like t hat soo umm, couldnt you physically destroy the dsn servers with like an explosive device... like if you did that to all of them (13) couldnt you really badly mess up the internet???

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  • by The Jester on February 11th, 2009

    The Jester

    it is every unlikly that it will ever happen but it is possible, there are 13 internet root servers which serve as the spine of the iternet. if you could create a big enough botnet, you could try and create a sustained DDoS on the root servers which would have a massive impact on the internet

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  • by Your sisters cute friend on September 30th, 2009

    Your sisters cute friend

    It not only can happen, it is likely and has been predicted by NASA. But the cause won't be some virus written by a Chinese troll, it will be from the wind of a huge solar flare. Read about the "Carrington Event" of 1959, where sparks emanated from telegraph wires and most anything metal, and just imagine what that would do to your computer, your router, your ISP, and on up the line.
    http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm

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  • by American4FreeHealth on December 7th, 2009

    American4FreeHealth

    Yes, but it would take something like an EMP that would also destroy the entire power grid and electronic and telecommunications infrastructure.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76m5EBzVDc0

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  • by Robertd903 on September 30th, 2009

    Robertd903

    Highly UNLIKELY, because fortunately, not all computers run under a MICROSOFT-made operating system!!!

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  • by Thrawn on October 3rd, 2006

    Thrawn

    Yes, given the fact that hacker group "l0pht" testified before congress that they could shut it down in 30 minutes. This would be done using "DOS" or "denial of service" overflows at the 13 key root DNS servers of the world. Also, if specific registrater sites (for domains) were somehow sustained damages to their SQL databases, it could cause widespread internet loss and catastrophe. There are many restrictians, and it would require intense planning, but it would be theoretically feasible.

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  • by AlexanderTheGreat on September 1st, 2009

    AlexanderTheGreat

    The Illuminati are doing it now.

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  • by Michael_B6838 on August 6th, 2011

    Michael_B6838

    the answer is always yes, but this question is broken, 'the internet world wide' sounds more like the world wide web which is the generally open subsite allocation system used with IP and dns addresses but that is easy to disrupt to the point of unusability, the collective and disparate parts of the "internet" is a different story many companies and governments have seperate linkable but non-dedicated computer networking systems that can act as an internet/intranet/extranet type service the whole backbone issue is over-concentrated as the surounding infrastructure currently can handle the workload as far as rerouting connectons goes...theefore the option of large scale physical damage would need to disrupt wireless signal both ground based and sattelite ie. a series of EMPs staggered periodically to collapse the new replacements from having connections restored and optical data stored

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  • by Dat_Dude9429 on June 3rd, 2010

    Dat_Dude9429

    I think that there has to be more than 13 key servers.

    Think about it. There are more than 100 countries worldwide. And it is unlikely that they would need to send their traffic across borders to be online.

    I think that every ISP in the world is in itself a key server. Because they are connecting of all their own users to the rest. And if they are servicing a large country, they probably have servers in all major cities.

    The internet is probably a web of millions of such servers to which people log on.

    Sure, there may be some larger ones necessary that gather connections between countries. But still. The fewer you have, the more bottlenecks you're creating. And speed is of the essence, so you would create more and more.

    I think that the internet is so unimaginably huge that if one server goes down, they jut route your traffic around it until it's up again.

    I have myself experinced that my own ISP was down. But it didn't make the news at all and I am sure the rest of the internet was doing fine. I have also experienced one evening where I couldn't go on websites outside my country, but still I am sure they were all working fine, and it worked again after a short while.

    So if we're talking about the whole internet i.e. a shutdown that will hit all online users worldwide, I doubt it is possible.

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  • by codepic on June 18th, 2010

    codepic

    Denial of Service attack against the 13 key root DNS servers would not "shut down" the internet but render it unusable for most of the users. So a malicious hacker could code a virus that'd spread into PCs, then download this file http://www.internic.net/zones/root.zone and use it as an attack list. Technically, the attack would be way too easy considering how big consequences it'd have on peoples' lives. And death for that matter.

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  • by GOGSGOGS on March 29th, 2010

    GOGSGOGS

    YES. anything is possible. if governments want service providers to cut their service indefinitely, and ban the internet, then who is gonna get you online with your internet modem? for instance if virgin media or sky were told the internet was now banned then they would pull the plug. simple as that and bt would have to be banned too. how you gonna get your modem online.

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  • by breakstress on February 24th, 2010

    breakstress

    I think the internet would just turn itself on right afterwords and punish whoever turned it off with spam mail.

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  • by hopefull2009 on January 26th, 2010

    hopefull2009

    i dont think so. and hope not, i want internet to do my work. if a person want's to shutdown the internet. i suggest he turns his off first. why the hell would anybody want to do that messed up karp anyway.

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  • by braunycakes on June 27th, 2010

    braunycakes

    DNS has nothing to do with shutting down the internet. the internet is copper wire ((among other media)). getting rid of the DNS merely delimits the ease of access to servers. instead, you would need to know an IP, vs a domain name. which is what the DNS does, it translates a domain name into a IP against a database.

    think arpanet. the first internet, working below a distributed system, and together in a protocol stack. furthermore, the same distributed system we use world wide today, and call the world wide web.

    aside from that, the internet is an invertebrate. it does not have a backbone. however, there are backbones to networks ((and backbone here is used ambiguously)), but the internet is a network of networks, an internetwork, which does not have a backbone. think of it as a rhizome. a group of entities whose connection to each other is conceptually indeterministic merely because there's always another way.

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  • by dom1nator on September 14th, 2010

    dom1nator

    What your people are talking about is the world wide web , WWW is not the internet, its just an application so the internet itself can not be taken out just its software ..

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  • by AliBa on April 8th, 2011

    AliBa

    It may be possible, but definetly not by one man or from one location. The Net was developed by a large group of people or companies and if the Human being still in control than I can assume it can only be possible by running an international coordinated project on a massive scale. If one day The Net becomes dangerous for the humanity but still controllable it may well be shut down.

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  • by SethGrande on April 7th, 2011

    SethGrande

    The nature of knowledge is emergent, and since we can only protect against the things we have knowledge of, it is only a matter of time (events passed) before new knowledge is known and someone develops a way to bypass the system that is the internet. Nothing is invincible, and whilst I don't actually know how to do it, I'm sure someone does. :)

    Sorry to be vague and profound but all these people saying it's impossible are just being optimistic :p

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  • by mieke.westra on February 1st, 2011

    mieke.westra

    Well, does it need to be the result of a virus? Up to which degree is the internet dependent on the physical locations in which they store data, or for instance lines (like wikileaks states in the list with possible terrorist targets) that physically link Europe with the US?

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  • by Dmanb90 on September 14th, 2010

    Dmanb90

    more then likely there is a way, its just its so far up the goverments ass that you will never reatch it.

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  • by Bblythe on January 26th, 2010

    Bblythe

    Well, ever since I got to this site I have discovered that the internet is more than it is.
    Each website (even the crappiest ones) still have work behind them, and there are many things hidden behind a website that we can't see.

    I think it possible to shut down the internet, if something happens. Maybe the wires and all that get severed, or maybe the satellite orbiting the Earth got somehow pushed out of orbit and cannot transmit information anymore. Nobody knows.

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