Networks

Traffic floods back, without much of an explanation

Iran’s government has decided the nation should reconnect to the global internet.

In the days after the USA and Israel attacked Iran in February, traffic from the Gulf nation to the global internet dropped to just one percent of usual volumes  – with the remaining trickle of traffic thought to be the result of a policy allowing access to a small group of mostly government and military users.

On Tuesday, Iran's vice-president Mohammad Reza Aref used his X account to announce “the first step toward free and regulated access to cyberspace has been taken.” Not long afterwards, NetBlocks and Cloudflare both recorded substantial traffic flowing to and from Iran for the first time in 88 days.

Outage-watchers at network observability outfit Kentik believe Iran’s disconnection is the longest such incident since Libya’s six-month shutdown in 2011.

Internet analyst Doug Madory rated it as far more significant, because Iran’s population is 15 times larger than Libya’s.

“Along with the sheer number of people cut off from the world, what makes this shutdown unique is Iran’s use of an elaborate system to selectively allow internet access for some favored individuals and organizations, while blocking the internet for everyone else, a practice referred to as either whitelisting or a tiered internet,” he wrote in April.

Outage-watching org NetBlocks thinks filtering of content remains in place, “but can be worked around,” but has also observed that Iran’s government has now restricted access to Meta’s messaging service WhatsApp.

Iran’s government said it blocked connections to the outside world as a national security measure. The nation has blocked traffic in the past during conflicts and internal protests, presumably to prevent citizens sharing the true state of the nation’s affairs with the world and to make life harder for would-be cyber-attackers.

Vice-president Aref said resuming connection will mean “smart services will be streamlined … and the obstacles to knowledge-based development and scientific authority will be removed,” but didn’t explain why the government decided to end outage at this time. Iran’s government has reportedly split over the issue of restoring connectivity. ®