Arbor Analyzes Iranian Traffic Engineering Post Election

Arbor Networks reported that Internet traffic for the state owned Data communication Company of Iran (or DCI), which acts as the gateway for all Internet traffic entering or leaving the country, dropped to a stand-still one the day after the elections on June 13th at 1:30pm GMT (9:30am EDT and 6:00pm Tehran / IRDT). All six regional and global providers connecting Iran to the rest of the world saw a near complete loss of traffic.


While other countries (e.g. Burma in 2007) completely unplugged the country during political unrest, Iran has taken a decidedly different tact.


In normal times, DCI carries roughly 5 Gbps of traffic (with a reported capacity of 12 Gbps) through 6 upstream regional and global Internet providers. For the region, this represents an average level of Internet infrastructure (for purposes of perspective, a mid size ISP in Michigan carries roughly the same level of traffic).


Within a few hours of the cut-off, a trickle of traffic returned across TeliaSonera, Reliance and SingTel -- all well under 1 Gbps. Further analysis is online.
http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2009/06/iranian-traffic-engineering