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China's battle to police the web |
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| Tue, March 25 2008 | 4:22PM | PermaLink |
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Web users in China are able to view the BBC News website for the first time in years. So how does the so-called great firewall of China work?
Most countries that block or filter the internet do so on a site-by-site basis. For example, Pakistan blocked YouTube recently by telling Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country to redirect traffic whenever someone typed in the address for the popular video sharing site.
By deliberately rewriting the net address books inside Pakistan, authorities were able to redirect traffic.
Instead the technology deployed by the Chinese government, called Golden Shield, scans data flowing across its section of the net for banned words or web addresses.
There are five gateways which connect China to the internet and the filtering happens as data is passed through those ports.
When the filtering system spots a banned term it sends instructions to the source server and destination PC to stop the flow of data.
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