wkrp
commented
1 year ago Looking at Cloudflare Radar graphs, there has been generally increased access to Cloudflare from Iran since about 2023-04-12 06:00 (five days ago).
https://radar.cloudflare.com/ir?range=14d
In Irancell, the change is striking: starting at 2023-04-12 06:00, the level of traffic increases by 7× over the next four hours. It reaches a maximum of 20× the usual value at 2023-04-15 20:00, then suddenly crashes at 2023-04-16 14:00 (yesterday) to only about 2× what it had been before the sudden increase on 2023-04-12. Essentially all the traffic is HTTP traffic.
Notes on calculations
The graph has tooltips on hover that show a timestamp and the amount of HTTP and total traffic for the most recent two time periods, not as absolute numbers but as percentages of the maximum value shown. The tooltips used to compute the numbers above were:
- Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 06:00 UTC
- Total traffic: 5.3% of Max (4.8% of Max before)
HTTP traffic: 5.1% of Max (4.6% of Max before) - Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 10:00 UTC
- Total traffic: 40.2% of Max (5.8% of Max before)
HTTP traffic: 40.1% of Max (5.6% of Max before) - Sat, Apr 15, 2023, 20:00 UTC
- Total traffic: 100.0% of Max (5.0% of Max before)
HTTP traffic: 99.8% of Max (4.9% of Max before) - Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 13:00 UTC
- Total traffic: 58.1% of Max (4.8% of Max before)
HTTP traffic: 58.0% of Max (4.6% of Max before) - Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 14:00 UTC
- Total traffic: 35.5% of Max (4.8% of Max before)
HTTP traffic: 35.3% of Max (4.6% of Max before) - Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 15:00 UTC
- Total traffic: 13.0% of Max (4.6% of Max before)
HTTP traffic: 12.9% of Max (4.5% of Max before) - Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 19:00 UTC
- Total traffic: 10.1% of Max (5.2% of Max before)
HTTP traffic: 10.0% of Max (5.1% of Max before)
The factor of 7 comes from 40.1 / 5.6 = 7.16. The factor of 20 comes from 100.0 / 5.0 = 20.00. The factor of 2 comes from 10.1 / 5.2 = 1.94.
Maybe there was some circumvention solution based on Cloudflare that people started using on 2023-04-12, which suddenly became very popular, and which Irancell was the first to react to, on 2023-04-16?
https://radar.cloudflare.com/as44244?range=14d
The graphs for MCI, TCI, and Arvan all show similar increases since 2023-04-12, though they don't have the sudden drop on 2023-04-16 that Irancell had:
https://radar.cloudflare.com/as197207?range=14d
Hello Dear Friends ,
Yesterday , one of the major internet providers in Iran called Irancell blocked all cloudflare IPs . It is understood that all ISPs will do so in the near future . I personally think this action is to force all Iranian websites to move their websites to domestic CDNs like Arvancloud . After this is achieved and all sites are moved inside the country , they will go ahead and block internet for good . No one will have access to it but those who the government grant permission to .
What is your take on the current situation in Iran ? Will they finally achieve what they wanted all these years and block internet for ever ?
Do you think they are able to or there will be new methods to bypass it ? The situation is really worrying .