Iran Goes Dark as Government Cuts Itself Off from Internet
In response to a growing anti-government protest movement, the government of Iran has disconnected itself from the global internet as of 18:45 UTC (10:15pm local).
The move follows nearly two weeks of selective internet blockages as protests grew in intensity in cities across the country. Earlier in the day, Iran severed all IPv6 connectivity when the country withdrew all of its IPv6 BGP routes at 11:49 UTC (3:19pm local). At 16:30 UTC (8pm local), traffic volumes into the country began a steady descent until the last remaining pieces of connectivity were disabled a little more than an hour ago.
The internet shutdown marks an ominous development for the situation in Iran, echoing the November 2019 protests (also known as Bloody November), which featured a similar national internet blackout and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Iranians.
Doug Madory is the director of internet analysis for Kentik where he works on internet infrastructure analysis. The Washington Post dubbed him “The Man who can see the Internet” for his reputation in identifying significant developments in the global layout of the internet. Doug is regularly quoted by major news outlets about developments ranging from national blackouts to BGP hijacks to the activation of submarine cables. Prior to Kentik, he was the lead analyst for Oracle’s internet intelligence team (formerly Dyn Research and Renesys).
About the data
How do we get this data? Kentik uses thousands of service provider networks and cloud agents, located around the world, to collect information about network events, outages, and disruptions.
Market leaders like Booking.com, Box, and Zoom turn to the Kentik Network Intelligence Platform to plan, run, and fix any network. We show network pros what they need to know about their network performance, health, and security to make their services, apps, and products shine.
Discover the power of the Kentik Network Intelligence Platform for yourself—get a demo with a product expert.
