Engineers at consultancy Renesys Corp. say they've confirmed that Egypt has all but disconnected from the Internet. The action came on the eve of what was expected to be a day of escalated anti-government rioting.

In addition, the country's mobile operators have been instructed to suspend services in certain parts of the country reports Reuters.

Initial reports of Internet disruptions supposedly came from a site called The Arabist (unreachable at press time), and the news was spread by outlets including The Huffington Post.

As Renesys's blog puts it:

Not every Internet connection in Egypt is down. As commenters on Renesys's blog noted, the ISP hosting Egypt's stock exchange was still up. A quick check showed that the stock exchange, Nilex, could be reached as of 12:20 a.m. Eastern, albeit slowly.

It's assumed that the Egyptian government shut itself off from the Internet on purpose, but there's been no confirmation so far as to exactly what happened. Light Reading will update this story as events warrant.

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading