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Renesys, a Vermont company, said the shutdown occurred just after midnight in Cairo, or late Thursday afternoon in New York, The New York Times reported. Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer, said this would have been easier in Egypt, which has relatively few international access points, than in countries linked to the Internet earlier.

"In a fundamental sense, it's as if you rewrote the map and they are no longer a country", Cowie said. "I never thought it would happen to a country the size and scale of Egypt."

Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesman, said traffic began falling off Thursday.

Vodafone, a cellular service company, said it and other operators have been ordered to halt service in parts of the country.

The mass protests that have rocked Egypt this week have been organized partly on social networking sites and YouTube.

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