From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

Summary

SubscribeIran is in the midst of one of the world’s most severe communications blackouts. This post uses Kentik data to detail how this historic event unfolded, where this event lies in the context of previous Iranian shutdowns, and finally discusses what might be in store next for Iran.For nearly two weeks, Iran has been enduring one of the most severe internet shutdowns in modern history. The theocratic regime’s decision to restrict communications coincided with a violent nationwide crackdown on a growing protest movement driven by worsening economic hardship. In this post, I explore the situation in Iran using Kentik’s aggregate NetFlow data, along with other sources. At the time of this writing, a near-complete internet shutdown has persisted for almost 14 days. Along with internet services, international voice calling has also been blocked (there have been a couple of periods when limited outgoing calls were allowed), and domestic communication services have experienced extended disruptions, including Iran’s National Information Network. For a country of 90 million people, the combined blocking of these communication modes makes this blackout one of the most severe in history. To learn more about the conditions that lead to the check out this special episode of Kentik’s Telemetry Now podcast with Iranian digital rights expert Amir Rashidi, Director of Digital Rights and Security at the human rights organization Miaan Group: For decades, the internet of Iran has been connected to the world via two international gateways: IPM, primarily a university and research network, was the country’s original internet connection in the 1990s, a story covered in the excellent book The Internet of Elsewhere by Cyrus Farivar. Years later, the state telecom TIC got into the business of providing internet service and today handles the vast majority of internet traffic into and out of Iran. Despite TIC’s dominance, IPM has maintained a technologically independent connection to the...