Without BGP information provided by Egyptian networks, the rest of the world has no way to connect with the country's ISPs or its Web sites. Nor do its citizens have a way to reach sites or services beyond its boundaries.

The Egyptian government apparently ordered the country's providers to sever their connections. Vodafone, for example, has acknowledged that it . Vodafone is also one of Egypt's largest ISPs.

"The Egyptian government has instructed the ISPs, whether state owned or state licensed, to withdraw their BGP announcements that tell other routers how to reach those ISPs," said Rodney Joffe, senior technologist with Neustar, a DNS (domain name system) service provider.

"Within a few seconds or at most a couple of minutes, traffic could no longer flow [to the Egyptian ISPs]," Joffe said. "For most of the ISPs inside Egypt, there's no longer a path that tells other networks how to reach them."

BGP is not only one of the backbone technologies of the Internet, but also provide its flexibility and strength, Joffe said.