Internet outage

Short description: Loss of internet functionality over a small or large area

Electronic information stand without an internet connection, at Schiphol Airport, Netherlands

An Internet outage, Internet blackout, or Internet shutdown is the complete or partial failure of the internet services. It can occur due to censorship, cyberattacks, disasters,[1] police or security services actions,[2] or errors.

Disruptions of submarine communications cables may cause blackouts or slowdowns to large areas. Countries with a less developed Internet infrastructure are more vulnerable due to small numbers of high-capacity links.

A line of research finds that the Internet with it having a "hub-like" core structure that makes it robust to random losses of nodes but also fragile to targeted attacks on key components − the highly connected nodes or "hubs".[3]

## Contents

* 1 Types
* 1.1 Government blackout
* 1.1.1 Military blackout
* 1.2 Weather or natural disaster
* 1.2.1 Solar storms
* 1.3 Cyberattacks
* 1.3.1 Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks
* 1.3.2 Routing attacks
* 1.3.3 Malware
* 1.3.4 Botnets
* 1.3.5 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Hijacking
* 1.4 Accidents
* 1.4.1 Natural disasters
* 1.4.2 Power failures
* 1.4.3 Human error
* 1.4.4 Equipment failure
* 1.4.5 Maintenance
* 1.4.6 Weather condition
* 2 Measurement
* 2.1 Expert Analysis
* 2.2 Remote Sensing
* 3 List
* 4 Prevention
* 5 Management
* 5.1 Temporary alternative forms of communication
* 6 See also
* 7 References
* 8 External links

## Types

### Government blackout

Main article: Internet censorship

A government internet blackout is the deliberate shut down of civilian internet access by a government for a small area or many large areas of its country. Such a shut down is typically used as a means of information control in a brief period of upheaval or transition. In autocracies, internet shutdowns have appeared especially in the context of contested elections and post-electoral violence.[4] Governments have also imposed internet shutdowns in the context of armed conflict, natural disasters, and school examinations.[5] Shutdowns can impede the ability of protesters or insurgent forces to mobilize and organize. It also serves to prevent real-time information access for foreign people or entities. Reactions from leaders, journalists, observers and others in foreign countries can be delayed.

Most internet shutdowns, implemented by governments, occur in India.[6] According to a 2022 study,

> Internet shutdowns by government in countries 2016-2025, according to Access Now

> Internet shutdown by government, authorities or military

> Internet shutdown in countries by government, authorities or military outside from their countries

> (1) rather than a centrally coordinated, top-down campaign from the central government, India’s 28 state governments are largely responsible for the issuing of shutdowns, and (2) the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is both directly and indirectly responsible for many of India’s shutdowns. BJP-run state governments issue more shutdowns than non-BJP states, primarily to suppress protest (the direct responsibility), while the party’s polarizing rhetoric and policies, coupled with the BJP-built limited regulatory framework governing the issuance of shutdowns, contribute to an environment in which the shutdowns can thrive (the indirect responsibility). Confirming these arguments, my quantitative analyses (2012–2020) reveal that districts in BJP-ruled states experience significantly more internet shutdowns (primarily in response to protests), while Hindu-Muslim conflict triggers internet shutdowns all across the country.[7]

#### Military blackout

The temporary disconnection of civilian internet access by military forces is an important aspect of information warfare. This tactic is common today, and is often used in concert with a ground invasion by conventional forces. It could also be used in advance of an airstrike campaign.

### Weather or natural disaster

Extreme weather events and natural disasters can lead to internet outages by either directly destroying local ICT infrastructure or indirectly damaging the local electricity grid. The Monash IP Observatory and KASPR Datahaus have tracked the impact of Hurricane Florence 2018,[8] Cyclone Fani 2018,[9] and Hurricane Laura in 2020.[10]

#### Solar storms

Solar superstorms could cause large-scale global months-long Internet outages. Researchers have described potential mitigation measures and exceptions – such as user-powered mesh networks, related peer-to-peer applications and new protocols – and the robustness of the current Internet infrastructure.[11][12][13]

### Cyberattacks

#### Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks

Screenshot of the Wikipedia website during a DDoS attack in February 2020, showing an error message in place of website content

These attacks flood a website or network with traffic from multiple sources, overwhelming the server and making it unavailable to users.

#### Routing attacks

These attacks target the infrastructure of the internet, specifically the routing systems that direct traffic between different networks. By manipulating or disrupting these systems, attackers can cause widespread outages.

#### Malware

Malicious software can infect and damage computer systems and networks, leading to internet outages.

#### Botnets

A botnet is a network of compromised computers that are controlled by an attacker. These computers can be used to launch DDoS attacks, spread malware, or perform other malicious actions that can cause internet outages.

#### Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Hijacking

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is used to route traffic on the internet. BGP hijacking is a form of cyber-attack where an attacker alters the routing information in BGP, causing internet traffic to be directed to the wrong place.

### Accidents

#### Natural disasters

Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters can damage internet infrastructure, causing outages.

#### Power failures

Internet service providers (ISPs) rely on electricity to power their networks, so power failures can cause outages.

#### Human error

Accidents caused by human error, such as a construction crew cutting through a fiber-optic cable, can cause internet outages.

#### Equipment failure

The failure of equipment such as servers, routers, and switches can cause internet outages.

#### Maintenance

Scheduled maintenance or unexpected repairs on the internet infrastructure can cause outages.

#### Weather condition

Inclement weather such as heavy snow, thunderstorm, and heavy rain can cause outages by damaging the infrastructure or making it difficult for maintenance crews to access and repair the network.

## Measurement

A variety of organizations measure internet shutdowns including the Open Observatory of Network Interference, Access Now, Freedom House, the Digital Society Project (using the V-Dem Institute methodology and infrastructure), the OpenNet Initiative, the University of Michigan's Censored Planet Observatory, the Internet Censorship Lab, and the Monash IP Observatory.[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][excessive citations] These organizations use a range of methods to detect shutdowns such as expert analysis, remote sensing, and remote sensing with oversight.[19] Some of these organizations, such as Access Now, maintain active lists of internet shutdowns.[21]

### Expert Analysis

Several organizations use expert analysis to identify internet shutdowns.[19] Some, such as the Digital Society Project (DSP), send out surveys to experts around the world, and then aggregate the results into a single score. For internet shutdowns, the DSP asks "How often does the government shut down domestic access to the Internet?" where answers range from "Extremely Often" to "Never or almost Never."[22] Freedom House's Freedom on the Net report also uses expert analysis to assess whether internet shutdowns have occurred, but instead of surveying multiple experts, Freedom House identifies and partners with a single expert to conduct an analysis.[15] Freedom House asks the question "Does the government intentionally disrupt the internet or cellphone networks in response to political or social events, whether temporary or long term, localized or nationwide?"[15] Generally expert analyses are more prone to false positives and fewer false negatives (i.e. identifying shutdowns that other sources cannot confirm), than remote sensing methods with manual oversight.[19]

### Remote Sensing

Other organizations use various remote sensing techniques to identify shutdowns.[19] Some organizations, such as the Open Observatory of Network Interference, the Internet Censorship Lab and the Monash IP-Observatory use automated remote sensing methods to detect internet shutdowns.[14][23][24] The Open Observatory of Network Interference uses software installed on computers of volunteers around the world to detect shutdowns. However these methods are prone to false positives, false negatives, and various technical challenges.[25][26][27]

In order to address these concerns, some organizations have implemented various methods of oversight.[19] Organizations such as Access Now and the OpenNet Initiative use such methods.[18] Access Now uses technological methods to detect shutdowns, but then confirms those shutdowns using news reports, reports from local activists, official government statements, and statements from ISPs.[18] The OpenNet Initiative has volunteers install software on their computers to check websites from access points around the world, then confirms those results with manual observations.[28] These methods are prone to more false negatives and fewer false positives (i.e. all shutdowns that these sources identify can be confirmed by other sources) than expert analyses.[19]

A comparatively new method for detecting internet shutdowns is remote sensing with automated oversight. These methods have been praised as more ethical and efficient as they do not endanger in-country volunteers.[29][30][31][26] However these methods have yet to produce regular datasets.[19]

## List

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Year | Name | Country or region | Affected users | Number of affected users (rough) | Description | Duration (rough) | Internet component | Cause | Entity responsible | Type

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Jul 17, 1997 | DNS TLD Outage | Worldwide |  | 50,000,000 | An Ingres database failure resulted in corrupt .com and .net zones, which were subsequently released to the DNS root servers. As the root servers were reloaded, they began to return failures for all domains in the .com and .net zones.[32][33] | 4 hours | DNS | Automation and Human Failure | InterNIC / Network Solutions | All .com and .net domains
2008 | 2008 submarine cable disruption | Middle East and Mediterranean Sea |  |  | Three separate incidents of major damage to submarine optical communication cables around the world occurred in 2008. The first incident caused damage involving up to five high-speed Internet submarine communications cables in the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East from 23 January to 4 February 2008, causing internet disruptions and slowdowns for users in the Middle East and India.[34] In late February there was another outage, this time affecting a fiber optic connection between Singapore and Jakarta.[35] On 19 December, FLAG FEA, GO-1, SEA-ME-WE 3, and SEA-ME-WE 4 were all cut.[36][37][38] |  | submarine cables | Unknown | Unknown |
2009  | Death of Michael Jackson  |

United States

|  |  | Shortly after the death of pop singer Michael Jackson, thousands of online media posts and users rapidly attempted results of Michael Jackson on how he died. This resulted in Google blocking Michael Jackson-related searches (after assumption that a DDoS attack was at hand), Twitter and Wikipedia crashing, and AOL Instant Messenger collapsing for 40 minutes.  |  | Search Engines & Social Media  | Multiple subjects on MJ's death results online.  | Events  |
2011 | 2011 submarine cable disruption | South Asia and Middle East |  |  | Two incidents of submarine communications cables cut off on 25 December 2011. The first cut off occurred to SEA-ME-WE 3 at Suez Canal, Egypt and the second cut off occurred to i2i which took place between Chennai, India and Singapore line. Both the incidents had caused the internet disruptions and slowdowns for users in the South Asia and Middle East in particular UAE.[39][40][41][42] |  | submarine cables | Unknown | Unknown |
2011 |  |  Armenia |  | 3,000,000 | A woman digging for scrap metal damaged land cables and thereby severed most connectivity for the nation of Armenia.[43] | 5 hours | land cables | digging | Unknown | Full
2011 |  |  Egypt |  |  | The Internet in Egypt was shut down by the government, whereby approximately 93%[44] of networks were without access in 2011 in an attempt to stop mobilization for anti-government protests.[45] |  | ISPs | government censorship |  Egypt | Full
2012  | 2012 Syrian internet outage  |  Syria  |  |  | On 29 November 2012 the Syrian internet was cut off from the rest of the world. The autonomous system (AS29386) of Syrian Telecommunication Establishment (STE) was cut off completely at 10:26 UTC. Five prefixes were reported to have remained up, this is why Dyn[46] reports an outage of 92% of the country.

Responsibility for the outage has somewhat speculatively been blamed on various organizations.[47][48]

|  |  | Unknown  | Unknown  |
2016 |  |  Germany | Deutsche Telekom | 900,000 | At the end of November 2016 0.9 million routers, from Deutsche Telekom and produced by Arcadyan, were crashed due to failed TR-064 exploitation attempts by a variant of Mirai, which resulted in internet connectivity problems for the users of these devices.[49][50] While TalkTalk later patched their routers, a new variant of Mirai was discovered in TalkTalk routers.[51][52][53] | 1 day | Internet routers | cyberattack | Unknown | Full
2016 |  |  Liberia |  |  | Mirai has also been used in an attack on Liberia's internet infrastructure in November 2016.[54][55][56] |  |  | cyberattack | Unknown | Full
2016 | DDoS attack on Dyn |  United States | Dyn |  | The cyberattack took place on October 21, 2016, and involved multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks) targeting systems operated by Domain Name System (DNS) provider Dyn, which caused major internet platforms and services to be unavailable to large swathes of users in Europe and North America.[57][58] As a DNS provider, Dyn provides to end-users the service of mapping an Internet domain name—when, for instance, entered into a web browser—to its corresponding IP address. The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack was accomplished through a large number of DNS lookup requests from tens of millions of IP addresses.[59] The activities are believed to have been executed through a botnet consisting of a large number of Internet-connected devices—such as printers, IP cameras, residential gateways and baby monitors—that had been infected with the Mirai malware. With an estimated throughput of 1.2 terabits per second, the attack is, according to experts, the largest DDoS attack on record.[60] | 1 day | Domain Name System (DNS) provider | cyberattack | Unknown | Major websites
2017 |  |  Cameroon | South-West and North-West of Cameroon | 20% of the country's population | On January 17, around 20 percent of the people in Cameroon had their internet blocked due to recent anti-government protests.[61][62][63] | 270 days or 8 months |  | government censorship |  Cameroon | Full
2017 |  |  North Korea |  |  | On October 1, The autonomous system (AS131279) of Star JV was cut off completely, due to alleged US cyber attack[64][65][66] | 9 hours and 31 minutes |  | cyberattack |  United States | Full
2019  | Zimbabwe Internet Shutdown | Zimbabwe  | Zimbabwean Citizens  | Majority of the country's population  | On 18 January, many parts of Zimbabwe faced an internet outage due to a national shutdown in response to rioting.

This was intended to prevent protesters from collaborating and planning further incidents. Initially, it was targeting specific services - VPNs, Social Media etc. -until a point where a full shutdown was implemented at which point only Cellular services would work - without internet access.

| Several days  |  |  | Zimbabwe Government  | Partial/Full
2019 | Verizon and BGP Optimizer |  United States | Verizon (company) |  | On June 24, 2019, many parts of the Internet faced an unprecedented outage as Verizon, the popular internet transit provider accidentally rerouted IP packets after it wrongly accepted a network misconfiguration from a small ISP in Pennsylvania, US.[67] According to The Register, systems around the planet were automatically updated, and connections destined for Facebook, Cloudflare, and others, ended up going through DQE and Allegheny, which buckled under the strain, causing traffic to disappear into a black hole.[68] | 3 hours | Internet transit provider | misconfiguration | Unknown | Major websites
2019 | Iranian internet shutdown  |  Iran |  |  | The Internet in Iran was shut down by the government, whereby approximately 96% of networks were without access in an attempt to stop mobilization for anti-government protests. | 7 days | ISPs | government censorship |  Iran | Full
2019 | Internet shutdown in India  |  India |  | 50,000,000  | The Government of India passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 which caused huge controversy and mass protest in various parts of India. In order to prevent protests and outrage on social media, various state governments including those of Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh decided to shut down internet access.  | Up to 9 days

Over one year (Kashmir)[69][70]

|  | government censorship  | Various State governments of India | Full
2019 | 2019 Burmese internet shutdown  |  Myanmar |  |  | On June 21, the Internet in Burma was shut down by the government. The Burmese government shut down the internet connection in nine townships of the northern Arakan State and one single township in the Southern Chin State, which was proposed by Burmese Military officers. The shutdown is ongoing, and has become the world's longest internet shutdown. |  |  | government censorship |  Burma | Full
2019 | 2019 Papua protests  |  Indonesia |  |  | To curb the escalating protests that occurred in the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua, Indonesian authorities imposed an internet blackout on both provinces on 21 August 2019. The blackout continued until the authority partially lifted the blackout on 4 September in several regions, with complete lifting of the restriction only occurring on 9 September.[71] | 19 days |  | government censorship |  Indonesia | Full
2019  | Amhara Region coup attempt  |  Ethiopia  |  |  |  |  |  | government censorship  |  Ethiopia  |
2020  | Tigray war  |  Ethiopia  |  |  |  |  |  | government censorship  |  Ethiopia  |
2021 |  |  North Korea |  |  | On October 21, North Korean internet infrastructure dropped off the internet, including public facing websites and email servers. All servers which were subject to monitoring were found to be offline.[72] | At least 14 minutes |  | Unknown | Unknown |
2021  | Facebook outage  | Worldwide  | LAN Internet Connection  | 2,850,000,000  | On October 4, 2021, at around 11:45 AM EST, the online social media site Facebook, as well as Facebook subsidiaries including Instagram and WhatsApp, went down. Around 4:00 PM EST, people reported other sites were not working via Downdetector, including Gmail and Twitter, the latter possibly caused by Facebook users reporting the outage.[73][74][75] The outage came less than a day after a whistleblower had been on 60 Minutes.[76] For a short period of time, no Facebook employee could access the building to investigate the issue due to their "keycards not working.".[77] At around 6:30 PM EST, Facebook reported that all their sites were up. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lost around $7B dollars after the outage.[78]

For more info, see 2021 Facebook outage

| 7 hours  | LAN connection  | BGP Withdrawal of IP Address (Facebook), Server overwhelming (other sites)  | Unknown  | Major websites
2022 | 2022 Kazakhstan internet shutdown  |  Kazakhstan |  |  | On 4 January 2022 the Internet in Kazakhstan was shut down on account of anti-government protests against sudden energy price rises.[79] | 5 days |  | government censorship |  Kazakhstan | mobile internet
2022 | Rogers outage |  Canada |  |  | On July 8, 2022, Rogers reported the largest outage in Canadian history. The outage affected both cable Internet and cellular networks, as well as critical infrastructure that used them, including Interac debit payments, hospitals, banks, and 9-1-1 access. The outage occurred during an update to the company's core IP network that resulted in the deletion of a routing filter on its distribution routers, which caused all possible routes to the internet to pass through the routers, exceeding the capacity of the routers on its core network. | 1 day |  | Network Update | Internal | Full
2022  | 2021–2022 Iranian protests  |  Iran  |  | 80 million  | globally cutting off its people’s access to the internet, whilst maintaining domestic national internet National Information Network [80][81][82] |  |  |  |  |
2023  | Gaza war  |  Gaza Strip  |  |  | lack of fuel led to internet services going down across the Gaza Strip[83][84] |  |  | fuel shortages caused by the blockade  |  |
2024  | July 2024 global cyber outages  | Worldwide  |  | ~8.5 million Windows devices  | On July 19, 2024, various IT systems around the world experienced an outage that has led to ongoing disruptions across different industries, including media firms, banks, and airlines.  |  |  | Security software faulty configuration update.  | CrowdStrike |
2024  | 2024 Bangladesh Quota Reform Movement  |  Bangladesh  |  |  | The movement was being mobilized utilizing social media networks, and to establish control over the situation government applied a complete internet shutdown to suppress protests throughout the country.[85] | 5 days  |  | government censorship  |  Bangladesh  | Full
2025  | 2025 Internet blackout in Iran  |  Iran  |  |  | The Islamic Republic of Iran blacked out the internet during the Iran–Israel war. The banking system crashed. WhatsApp was asked to be deleted.[86][87][88] | Now  |  | government censorship  |  Iran  |
2025  | 2025 Internet slowdown in the Middle East  |  United Arab Emirates and the Middle East |  |  | A major undersea cable located in the Red Sea was disrupted, triggering internet slowdowns mainly in the UAE and the Middle East since September 6, 2025.[89][90] It is estimated to last six weeks, due to the process of repairing cables.[91] | Now  |  | Cable disruption in the Red Sea  | Unknown  | Full
2025  |  |  Afghanistan  |  |  | Taliban reportedly imposes blackout in a crackdown on immorality.[92] |  |  | government censorship  | Template:Country data Taliban |
2025  | Cloudflare outage | Worldwide  |  | ~2,650,000,000  | On November 18, 2025, Cloudflare experienced a global outage that caused widespread 500 errors, resulting in many websites running slowly, being unavailable, or not working at all for users around the world (including sites such as Twitter, Spotify, Uber, Canva, and ChatGPT).  | 6 hours  | Database system integrated with the Bot Management service  | A permissions change in a database triggered a bug in Cloudflare's Bot Management system  |  | Major websites
2026 | 2026 Internet blackout in Iran  |  Iran | Iran | 92,417,681+ | The Internet in Iran was shut down to stop mobilization for anti-government protests. | Template:Duration in days days |  | Government censorship | SNSC, MICT | Full[93]

## Prevention

Internet outages can be prevented by a more resilient, decentralized Internet architecture.[94]

For internet outages that are caused by issues on the internet service provider's or mobile network carrier's side, businesses and consumers can use failover solutions that use channel bonding / link aggregation technology. The idea is to use multiple internet sources from different providers. If one of them fails, the traffic is picked up by the other working one(s).

## Management

### Temporary alternative forms of communication

## See also

* BGP hijacking - Attack on Internet routing infrastructure
* Physics:Communications blackout - Halt to communication abilities or utilization
* Cyberwarfare
* Cyberweapon - Malware agent
* Decentralization § Centralization and re-decentralization of the Internet
* Critical Internet infrastructure - Infrastructure without which the Internet would not function
* Internet backbone - Vital infrastructure of the networks of the Internet
* Social:Internet kill switch - Single shut off mechanism for all Internet traffic
* Social:Just-in-time blocking
* Malware
* Network congestion - Reduced quality of service due to high network traffic
* Engineering:Power outage - Loss of electric power to an area
* Social:Protests against SOPA and PIPA - Series of protests from 2011 to 2012

## References

1. ↑ Petersen, Hauke; Baccelli, Emmanuel; Wählisch, Matthias; Schmidt, Thomas C.; Schiller, Jochen (27 October 2014). "The Role of the Internet of Things in Network Resilience" (in en). Internet of Things. IoT Infrastructures. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering. 151. Springer, Cham. pp. 283–296. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-19743-2_39. ISBN 978-3-319-19742-5. Bibcode: 2014arXiv1406.6614P.
2. ↑ Ellis-Petersen, Hannah (2020-01-05). "'Many lives have been lost': five-month internet blackout plunges Kashmir into crisis" (in en-GB). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/05/the-personal-and-economic-cost-of-kashmirs-internet-ban.
3. ↑ Doyle, John C.; Alderson, David L.; Li, Lun; Low, Steven; Roughan, Matthew; Shalunov, Stanislav; Tanaka, Reiko; Willinger, Walter (11 October 2005). "The "robust yet fragile" nature of the Internet" (in en). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102 (41): 14497–14502. doi:10.1073/pnas.0501426102. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 16204384. Bibcode: 2005PNAS..10214497D.
4. ↑ Eichhorn, Kristin; Linhart, Eric (2022-06-23). "Election-related internet-shutdowns in autocracies and hybrid regimes". Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 33 (4): 705–725. doi:10.1080/17457289.2022.2090950. ISSN 1745-7289. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2022.2090950.
5. ↑ Rosson, Zach; Anthonio, Felicia; Tackett, Carolyn (May 2024). "Shrinking democracy, growing violence: internet shutdowns in 2023". https://www.accessnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2023-KIO-Report.pdf.
6. ↑ Ellis-Petersen, Hannah; Hassan, Aakash (2023-09-25). "'A tool of political control': how India became the world leader in internet blackouts" (in en-GB). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/25/a-tool-of-political-control-how-india-became-the-world-leader-in-internet-blackouts.
7. ↑ Ruijgrok, Kris (2022). "The authoritarian practice of issuing internet shutdowns in India: the Bharatiya Janata Party's direct and indirect responsibility". Democratization 29 (4): 611–633. doi:10.1080/13510347.2021.1993826. ISSN 1351-0347. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2021.1993826.
8. ↑ "The Monash IP Observatory - Hurricane Florence's impact on local internet" (in en). https://ip-observatory.org/observatory/hurricane-florence-2018.
9. ↑ "Visualising Tropical Cyclone Fani's Path of Destruction in Real-Time" (in en). 4 May 2019. https://medium.com/insights-monash-university-ip-observatory/visualising-tropical-cyclone-fanis-path-of-destruction-in-real-time-b643cf9fd72c.
10. ↑ "Real-time Mapping of Hurricane Laura's Impact on Internet Infrastructure" (in en). 29 August 2020. https://medium.com/insights-monash-university-ip-observatory/real-time-mapping-of-hurricane-lauras-impact-on-internet-infrastructure-9584162885ab.
11. ↑ "Computer scientist warns global internet is not prepared for a large solar storm" (in en). techxplore.com. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-08-scientist-global-internet-large-solar.html.
12. ↑ "A Bad Solar Storm Could Cause an 'Internet Apocalypse'". Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/solar-storm-internet-apocalypse-undersea-cables/. Retrieved 22 September 2021.
13. ↑ Jyothi, Sangeetha Abdu (9 August 2021). "Solar superstorms: Planning for an internet apocalypse". Proceedings of the 2021 ACM SIGCOMM 2021 Conference. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 692–704. doi:10.1145/3452296.3472916. ISBN 9781450383837.
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Niaki, Arian Akhavan; Cho, Shinyoung; Weinberg, Zachary; Hoang, Nguyen Phong; Razaghpanah, Abbas; Christin, Nicolas; Gill, Phillipa (2019-07-09). "ICLab: A Global, Longitudinal Internet Censorship Measurement Platform". arXiv:1907.04245 [cs.CR].
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 "Freedom on the Net Research Methodology" (in en). https://freedomhouse.org/reports/freedom-net/freedom-net-research-methodology.
16. ↑ Mechkova, V., Daniel P., Brigitte S.,&Steven W. (2020). Digital Society Project Dataset v2.Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project http://digitalsocietyproject.org/
17. ↑ Coppedge, Michael; Gerring, John; Knutsen, Carl Henrik; Lindberg, Staffan I.; Teorell, Jan; Marquardt, Kyle L.; Medzihorsky, Juraj; Pemstein, Daniel; Pernes, Josefine; von Römer, Johannes; Stepanova, Natalia (2019-04-01). "V-Dem Methodology V9". SSRN 3441063.
18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Anthonio, Felicia; Cheng, Sage (2021). "Shutdown Tracker Optimization Project (STOP) Methodology". https://www.accessnow.org/cms/assets/uploads/2021/02/Read-Me_-How-to-view-the-Access-Now-Internet-Shutdown-Tracker-Updated-Mar-2021.pdf.
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 19.5 19.6 19.7 Fletcher, Terry; Hayes-Birchler, Andria (2020-07-30). "Comparing Measures of Internet Censorship: Analyzing the Tradeoffs between Expert Analysis and Remote Measurement" (in en). doi:10.5281/ZENODO.3967397. https://zenodo.org/record/3967397.
20. ↑ "The draconian rise of internet shutdowns" (in en). Wired. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/internet-shutdowns. Retrieved 2021-09-03.
21. ↑ "#KeepItOn: Fighting internet shutdowns around the world" (in en). https://www.accessnow.org/keepiton/.
22. ↑ Mechkova, Valeriya; Pemstein, Daniel; Seim, Brigitte; Wilson, Steven (2021). Digital Society Survey Codebook. Digital Society Project. http://digitalsocietyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/DSP-Codebook-v3.pdf.
23. ↑ "OONI Explorer - Open Data on Internet Censorship Worldwide" (in en). https://explorer.ooni.org/.
24. ↑ "The Monash IP Observatory" (in en). https://ip-observatory.org/about.
25. ↑ Yadav, Tarun Kumar; Chakravarty, Sambuddho (2018-04-18). "Trends and patterns of internet censorship in india" (in en-US). IIIT-Delhi Institutional Repository. https://repository.iiitd.edu.in/xmlui/handle/123456789/668.
26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Weinberg, Zachary (2018). "Toward Automated Worldwide Monitoring of Network-level Censorship". Carnegie Mellon University. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331045547.
27. ↑ Pearce, Paul; Ensafi, Roya; Li, Frank; Feamster, Nick; Paxson, Vern (2018). "Toward Continual Measurement of Global Network-Level Censorship". IEEE Security & Privacy 16 (1): 24–33. doi:10.1109/MSP.2018.1331018. ISSN 1540-7993. Bibcode: 2018ISPri..16a..24P.
28. ↑ Faris, R.; Villeneuve, N. (2008). "Measuring Global Internet Filtering in R. Deibert, J. Palfrey, R. Rohozinski, & J. Zittrain, (Eds.), Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, Cambridge: MIT Press". http://opennet.net/sites/opennet.net/files/Deibert_02_Ch01_005-028.pdf.
29. ↑ VanderSloot, B., McDonald, A., Scott, W., Halderman, J.A., & Ensafi, R. (2018). Quack: Scalable Remote Measurement of Application-Layer Censorship. In Proceedings of the 27th USENIX Security Symposium.
30. ↑ Hoang, P. N., Doreen, S., Polychronakis, M., (2019). Measuring I2P Censorship at a Global Scale. In Proceedings of the 9th USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet.
31. ↑ Raman, R. S., Stoll, A., Dalek, J., Ramesh, R. Scott, W., & Ensafi, R. (2020). Measuring the Deployment of Network Censorship Filters at Global Scale. Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2020.
32. ↑ Wayner, Peter (1997-07-17). "Human Error Cripples the Internet". New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/071797dns.html. Retrieved 2021-12-19.
33. ↑ "DNS Brownout this morning". Usenet. https://groups.google.com/g/comp.protocols.dns.bind/c/rDunynim12U/m/FedJdyxt484J.
34. ↑ "Cable damage hits one million Internet Users". Khaleej News. 2008-02-04. Archived from the original on 9 February 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080209140523/http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=theuae&xfile=data/theuae/2008/february/theuae_february121.xml. Retrieved 2008-02-04.
35. ↑ "Internet capacity down to 10%". The Jakarta Post. 2008-02-29. Archived from the original on 3 March 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080303185053/http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/02/29/internet-capacity-down-10.html. Retrieved 1 March 2008.
36. ↑ Fried, Malcolm; Klemming, Lars (2008-12-19). "Severed Cables in Mediterranean Disrupt Communication (Update4)". Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=ayPbWf_7l17w. Retrieved 2009-01-12.
37. ↑ "GO submarine cable fault part of wider disruption between Italy and Egypt". timesofmalta.com. 2008-12-19. Archived from the original on 25 December 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20081225171226/http://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081219/local/go-submarine-cable-fault-part-of-wider-number-between-italy-and-egypt. Retrieved 2009-01-12.
38. ↑ "Mediterranean submarine cables are cut, affecting internet". Telecompaper. 19 December 2008. http://www.telecompaper.com/news/article.aspx?cid=650982. Retrieved 2009-01-12.
39. ↑ "Deep sea cable snap will make Internet slower: du". khaleejtimes.com. 27 December 2011. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle08.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2011/December/theuae_December715.xml&section=theuae. Retrieved 27 December 2011.
40. ↑ "Cable cut slows down Internet in UAE". emirates247.com. 26 December 2011. http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/cable-cut-slows-down-internet-in-uae-2011-12-26-1.434621. Retrieved 27 December 2011.
41. ↑ "Cable cuts could slow Emirates Internet". finance.yahoo.com. 26 December 2011. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/company-cable-cuts-could-slow-143049901.html. Retrieved 27 December 2011.
42. ↑ "du alerts customers over disruption in Internet services". gulftoday.ae. 27 December 2011. http://gulftoday.ae/portal/be625050-5cf4-47be-8a68-431308642e28.aspx. Retrieved 27 December 2011.
43. ↑ "Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia". The Guardian. 6 April 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
44. ↑ Cowie, James. "Egypt Leaves the Internet". Renesys. Archived from the original on 29 January 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20110129105030/http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/01/egypt-leaves-the-internet.shtml. Retrieved 28 January 2011.
45. ↑ "Egypt severs internet connection amid growing unrest". BBC News. 28 January 2011. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12306041.
46. ↑ "77 networks out in Syria - Internet Events Bulletin". http://b2b.renesys.com/eventsbulletin/2012/11/SY-1354184790.html.
47. ↑ "How Syria Turned Off the Internet" (in en). 2012-11-29. https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-syria-turned-off-the-internet/.
48. ↑ Ackerman, Spencer (2014-08-13). "Snowden: NSA accidentally caused Syria's internet blackout in 2012" (in en-GB). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/13/snowden-nsa-syria-internet-outage-civil-war.
49. ↑ Krebs, Brian (30 November 2016). "New Mirai Worm Knocks 900K Germans Offline". krebsonsecurity.com. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/11/new-mirai-worm-knocks-900k-germans-offline/. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
50. ↑ "German leaders angry at cyberattack, hint at Russian involvement". Deutsche Welle. http://www.dw.com/en/german-leaders-angry-at-cyberattack-hint-at-russian-involvement/a-36573668. Retrieved 5 January 2017.
51. ↑ "New Mirai Variant Embeds in TalkTalk Home Routers". 7 December 2016. https://www.incapsula.com/blog/new-variant-mirai-embeds-talktalk-home-routers.html.
52. ↑ "Hackers suspected as 900,000 hit by internet outage". 28 November 2016. https://www.thelocal.de/20161128/mass-internet-outrage-hits-900000-telekom-users. Retrieved 19 February 2017.
53. ↑ "German internet outage was failed botnet attempt: report". Reuters. 29 November 2016. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-deutsche-telekom-outages-idUSKBN13N12K. Retrieved 19 February 2017.
54. ↑ McGoogan, Cara (4 November 2016). "Unprecedented cyber attack takes Liberia's entire internet down". The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/11/04/unprecedented-cyber-attack-takes-liberias-entire-internet-down/. Retrieved 21 November 2016.
55. ↑ "DDoS attack from Mirai malware 'killing business' in Liberia". PCWorld. 3 November 2016. http://www.pcworld.com/article/3138631/security/ddos-attack-from-mirai-malware-killing-business-in-liberia.html. Retrieved 21 November 2016.
56. ↑ "Massive cyber-attack grinds Liberia's internet to a halt". The Guardian. 3 November 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/03/cyberattack-internet-liberia-ddos-hack-botnet. Retrieved 21 November 2016.
57. ↑ Etherington, Darrell; Conger, Kate (21 October 2016). "Many sites including Twitter, Shopify and Spotify suffering outage". https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/21/many-sites-including-twitter-and-spotify-suffering-outage/.
58. ↑ "The Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown". Bloomberg.com. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-21/internet-service-disrupted-in-large-parts-of-eastern-u-s.
59. ↑ Newman, Lily Hay. "What We Know About Friday's Massive East Coast Internet Outage" (in en-US). WIRED. https://www.wired.com/2016/10/internet-outage-ddos-dns-dyn/.
60. ↑ Woolf, Nicky (2016-10-26). "DDoS attack that disrupted internet was largest of its kind in history, experts say" (in en-GB). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/26/ddos-attack-dyn-mirai-botnet.
61. ↑ Condliffe, Jamie. "Cameroon's Internet outage is damaging the country's economy" (in en). MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603644/cameroons-internet-outage-is-draining-its-economy/. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
62. ↑ "Why has Cameroon blocked the internet?". BBC News. 8 February 2017. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38895541. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
63. ↑ "Google coding champion whose Cameroon hometown is cut off from the internet". BBC News. 10 February 2017. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38922819. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
64. ↑ "Sony hack: North Korea back online after internet outage" (in en). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30584093.
65. ↑ "North Korea's Internet Comes Back on After About 9 Hours". https://time.com/3645196/north-korea-internet-nine-hours/.
66. ↑ "North Korea Gets New Internet Link via Russia" (in en). https://dyn.com/blog/north-korea-gets-new-internet-link-via-russia/.
67. ↑ "How Verizon and a BGP Optimizer caused a major internet outage affecting Amazon, Facebook, CloudFlare among others" (in en-US). https://hub.packtpub.com/how-verizon-and-a-bgp-optimizer-caused-a-major-internet-outage-affecting-amazon-facebook-cloudflare-among-others/.
68. ↑ "BGP super-blunder: How Verizon today sparked a 'cascading catastrophic failure' that knackered Cloudflare, Amazon, etc" (in en-US). The Register. 2019-06-24. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/06/24/verizon_bgp_misconfiguration_cloudflare/.
69. ↑ "Kashmir Internet Shutdown Continues, Despite Supreme Court Ruling" (in en-US). https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/kashmir-internet-shutdown-continues-despite-supreme-court-ruling/.
70. ↑ "India's Internet shutdown in Kashmir is the longest ever in a democracy". The Washington Post. 16 December 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-internet-shutdown-in-kashmir-is-now-the-longest-ever-in-a-democracy/2019/12/15/bb0693ea-1dfc-11ea-977a-15a6710ed6da_story.html.
71. ↑ Briantika, Adi (3 June 2020). "Presiden & Menkominfo Diputus Bersalah Blokir Internet Papua" (in id). Tirto.id. https://tirto.id/presiden-menkominfo-diputus-bersalah-blokir-internet-papua-fEQV. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
72. ↑ Weisensee, Nils (23 August 2021). "Half a dozen North Korean domains offline after apparent server outage | NK News". NK News - North Korea News (Korea Risk Group). https://www.nknews.org/2021/08/half-a-dozen-north-korean-domains-offline-after-apparent-server-outage/.
73. ↑ Strozewski, Zoe; McDonald, Scott (October 4, 2021). "Internet Outage Live Updates: AOC Blasts Facebook's 'Monopolistic' Behavior". Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/internet-outage-live-updates-facebook-whats-app-among-sites-down-1635390.
74. ↑ Li, David K.; Solon, Solivia; Collier, Kevin (October 4, 2021). "Facebook blames 'faulty configuration change' for major outages". NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/social-media-giants-facebook-instagram-whatsapp-all-experiencing-outages-n1280726.
75. ↑ "After a bad day, Facebook suffers major outage". 4 October 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/04/tech/facebook-instagram-whatsapp-outage/index.html.
76. ↑ "Facebook whistleblower says company incentivizes "angry, polarizing, divisive content"". 4 October 2021. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-60-minutes-polarizing-divisive-content/.
77. ↑ "Facebook says sorry for mass outage and reveals why it happened". 5 October 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/facebook-says-sorry-for-mass-outage-and-reveals-why-it-happened.html.
78. ↑ "Zuckerberg Loses $6 Billion in Hours as Facebook Plunges". Bloomberg.com. 4 October 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-04/zuckerberg-loses-7-billion-in-hours-as-facebook-plunges.
79. ↑ "Internet disrupted in Kazakhstan amid energy price protests" (in en-US). 2022-01-04. https://netblocks.org/reports/internet-disrupted-in-kazakhstan-amid-energy-price-protests-oy9YQgy3.
80. ↑ Thorbecke, Catherine (2022-09-24). "Iran's sweeping internet blackouts are a serious cause for concern | CNN Business" (in en). https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/24/tech/iran-internet-blackout/index.html.
81. ↑ Newman, Lily Hay (2022-09-30). "The Challenge of Cracking Iran's Internet Blockade" (in en-US). Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. https://www.wired.com/story/subvert-iran-internet-blackout/. Retrieved 2023-05-15.
82. ↑ Harter, Fred (2023-02-28). "Record number of countries enforced internet shutdowns in 2022 – report" (in en-GB). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/feb/28/internet-shutdowns-record-number-countries-2022-report.
83. ↑ Gritten, David (2023-11-16). "Gaza faces communications blackout due to lack of fuel" (in en-GB). The BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67441025.
84. ↑ Collier, Kevin (2023-10-09). "Gaza Strip experiencing internet outages and electricity cuts after bombings" (in en). https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-strip-experiencing-internet-outages-electricity-cuts-bombings-rcna119564.
85. ↑ Zulfaqar, Samra (2024-07-21). "Bangladesh has erupted over jobs reserved for the children of 'freedom fighters.' Here's what you need to know" (in en). https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/19/asia/bangladesh-job-quota-protests-explainer-intl-hnk.
86. ↑ "'No way to pay': banking, internet outage hit Iranians amid Israeli strikes" (in en). 2025-06-17. https://www.iranintl.com/en/202506177109.
87. ↑ "Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices" (in en). 2025-06-17. https://apnews.com/article/iran-whatsapp-meta-israel-d9e6fe43280123c9963802e6f10ac8d1.
88. ↑ Sutherland, Callum (2025-06-18). "Why Iran Is Urging Residents to Delete WhatsApp Amid Israel Conflict" (in en). TIME. https://time.com/7295424/iran-urges-residents-delete-whatsapp-israel-privacy/. Retrieved 2025-06-18.
89. ↑ "Internet down in UAE after Red Sea cable cuts: What caused it and when it will be fixed". The Times of India. 2025-09-10. ISSN 0971-8257. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/internet-down-in-uae-after-red-sea-cable-cuts-what-caused-it-and-when-it-will-be-fixed/articleshow/123745123.cms.
90. ↑ Varghese, Justin (2025-09-08). "UAE internet outage: What's the real story behind the Red Sea cable cuts?" (in en). https://gulfnews.com/business/markets/uae-internet-outage-whats-the-story-behind-the-red-sea-cable-cuts-1.500261175.
91. ↑ Nasir, Sarwat; Gillett, Katy (2025-09-08). "UAE internet could be disrupted for six weeks amid Red Sea cable repairs" (in en). https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/uae/2025/09/08/uae-internet-could-be-disrupted-for-six-weeks-amid-red-sea-cable-repairs/.
92. ↑ "UN calls on Taliban to restore internet in Afghanistan after telecoms blackout" (in en). 30 September 2025. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250930-taliban-impose-communications-blackout-across-afghanistan.
93. ↑ "Netblocks". https://mastodon.social/@netblocks/115874620939883209.
94. ↑ Hiner, Jason. "Takeaways from Egypt: Kill the kill switch and decentralize the Internet" (in en). https://www.zdnet.com/article/takeaways-from-egypt-kill-the-kill-switch-and-decentralize-the-internet/.

## External links

* The Internet could crash. We need a Plan B, TED talk by Danny Hillis
* Redecentralize.org

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