The Internet was "turned back on" Wednesday in Egypt after being shut down by the government for five days in the wake of national turmoil and protests, and a day after President Hosni Mubarak said he will not run for re-election in September.
Internet monitoring firm Renesys said Internet access returned "at 09:29:31 UTC (11:29am Cairo time). Websites such as the Egyptian Stock Exchange, Commercial International Bank of Egypt, MCDR, and the US Embassy in Cairo are once again reachable."
The firm said "all major Egyptian ISPs" appeared to be back and working." The Noor Group, which was one of the last Internet service providers to end service on Monday, was one of the last to get back online Tuesday "with a full complement of prefixes as of 12:52pm Cairo time. Better late than never."
Bloggers have wasted no time in taking advantage of the access. Many are posting stories and photos on various websites.
Renesys says the switch back on "wasn't totally smooth; a few larger network blocks belonging to the Egyptian Universities Network (AS2561) were still missing. Unfortunately, these included the address space that hosts the .eg top level domain servers. The routes have since recovered."
Facebook and Twitter, too, are accessible and working in Egypt, "at least from the places we can monitor. No traffic blocks are in place, DNS answers are clean, IP addresses match, no funny business. For now."
More on the crisis in Egypt from Technolog and msnbc.com:
