I swear I just thought the same thing to myself.. Very concisely written, but it's written both interesting and well. Not to mention it's always welcome to see large companies like this share vital information with the public [+1 internet points for CloudFlare] :)
I wonder if it would be possible to hack into these "wall" routers from inside the country (or I suppose outside), but something tells me probably not (I doubt they would even be ping-able, but maybe through other attack vectors [like other internal computers]...). Seriously, I can't imagine how enraged I would be if someone decided to simply block the Internet.
Since BGP is sent over TCP, the routers are definitely pingable. You know how when you run traceroute you see a bunch of IPs between you and your destination? Routers like these are those hops.
Ah, sorry, I meant now, in the current state. I wonder if they just shut them down (the routers), or blocked all incoming connections from the outside...
Probably the simplest thing to do would be to just shut off the ports leading to external networks at the physical layer using management commands. They'd not be pingable from the outside, naturally, and it'd look like a cable cut (until you start doing TDR on the cable anyway), but they could bring it back online quickly once the powers that be choose to do so.
Most providers setup bgp sessions over loopback addresses only reachable from the remote router.. So no, being tcp doesn't imply the should respond to ping.
I wonder if it would be possible to hack into these "wall" routers from inside the country (or I suppose outside), but something tells me probably not (I doubt they would even be ping-able, but maybe through other attack vectors [like other internal computers]...). Seriously, I can't imagine how enraged I would be if someone decided to simply block the Internet.