Internet service in Syria has been restored following an apparent communications blackout on Friday, according to Internet connectivity monitor Renesys.

It wasn't clear who pulled the plug on the Syrian Internet in the first place, withdrawing the routes to 40 of 59 networks from the global routing table early Friday, according to Renesys.

But the Internet shutdown in Syria, which is experiencing waves of anti-government protests that have grown increasingly violent in recent days, is reminiscent of a government shutdown of the Internet in Egypt during that country's Arab Spring protests in January.

What's more, Renesys reported that network prefixes that remained reachable during the shutdown included Syrian government networks, though many government websites were "slow to respond or down."

Networks that were "not reachable include, substantially, all of the prefixes reserved for SyriaTel's 3G mobile data networks, and smaller downstream ISPs including Sawa, INET, and Runnet," the monitoring service said.

Syria's Internet is run by the state-owned Syrian Telecom Establishment, according to Renesys, which said that essentially sole domestic provider buys Internet transit mainly from Turk Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, with a few other foreign providers chipping in as well.

Meanwhile, Mashable points to some disturbing videos on YouTube's Citizentube channel of violent clashes between government forces and street protesters on June 2 that were sent from Syrians by satellite phone during the Internet blackout.