What will happen if internet shuts down?

While, this might be the déjà vu that none of us would ever want to experience in their lives but, the fact is that we are expecting a global internet shutdown for a couple of hours and all this for our own security. A few hours without your most loved technological advancement by mankind is the price that you need to pay for the safety of your online transactions that you make over the internet every now and then.

So, if you face any problems accessing your favorite websites, you need not want to worry at all as this is because the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will be updating the cryptographic key that helps protect the Domain Name System (DNS), which is the address book that helps identify the websites and their associated DNS addresses. For those who don't know what ICANN is, ICANN is the organisation which practically controls the global internet. It is based in Los Angeles, California and is responsible for maintaining the registry of domain names and IP addresses on the internet.

You all might have some questions around this global internet shutdown and we have them all answered below -

What the heck is a DNS?

 DNS address can be thought of an address book of the internet. Basically, the internet is just a network of computers interlinked to each other and each computer or node as we term it in networking language, is assigned an IP address which is numerical. The DNS address book just helps us to link these numerical addresses to the website names which are easy to remember by humans. This is a very simple explanation of DNS in layman terms, but if you want to know more then, you can always google stuff up!

Also, we have covered this little trick that uses DNS to speed up your internet access!! Check this here!!

Why is the internet shutting down? 

ICANN (Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers) is going to carry out the process of changing the cryptographic keys that are used to encrypt the DNS servers. So, while the update is in progress those websites will not be linked to their DNS and hence, will appear to be non-existent for a while.

Will the internet stop functioning all together?

No, this does not mean that the entire internet will become dead. There will be sites that will run despite of the updation process as the process will be carried out in batches. Also, as per ICANN's estimates about 1% of the worldwide internet users will be affected by this, which is pretty low but still accounts for more than 35 million users across the globe.

What you need to do?

Actually, the answer is nothing. Yes, you don't need to do anything simply because it's beyond your control unless you are the head of ICANN. But, you can still try the little trick we covered earlier if you still haven't because that is something that you can do and let us know if it worked for you or not. Meanwhile, write down your thoughts about the global internet shutdown in the comment section down below.