Traffic drop for Cloudflare in Iran since January 2023

[fortuna]

I heard that Iran started blocking Cloudflare IPs a few weeks ago, interfering with circumvention tools that use Cloudflare as front, but also many websites that are hosted there.

On January 15, 2023 (Feb 12 minus 28 days), you can see a drop in traffic on Cloudflare Radar:

MCCI

On MCCI:

• Jan 16: traffic starts increasing
• Feb 14, traffic drops, recovers in a few days
• Feb 18: sharp drop, with recovery the following day

TCI

On TCI, traffic drops on Jan 15, 2023, and never recovers:

IranCell

• Jan 15, 2023: sharp drop, with gradual recovery
• Jan 30, 2023: Another sharp drop. Starts recovering after about a week
• Feb 21, 2023: Another sharp drop, followed by a quick , partial recovery.
• Feb 24, 2023: Another drop, taking traffic to the early February level.

[myleshorton]

I'm quite confused about how anyone is using Cloudflare as a front @fortuna. At least for us they blocked fronting many years ago.

[fortuna]

@myleshorton I mean "IP fronting" not domain fronting, I'm sorry for the confusion. It's about using their shared IPs, so the VPNs can't get blocked by IP.

[myleshorton]

Oh that's interesting -- I feel like I've been confused on this point for years (constantly thinking "why is anyone using Cloudflare for...anything?)!! Thanks @fortuna