Iran's Internet partially restored — Cloudflare Radar shows surge after nearly three-month outage
Key Points
- Traffic recovered to ~40% of 2026 peak
- DNS queries and bytes transferred spiked
- IPv6 announcements remain nearly zero
Summary
Cloudflare Radar observed a marked increase in traffic and DNS queries on 2026-05-26, indicating a partial restoration of Iran’s national Internet after a near-three-month outage that began on 2026-02-28. The recovery started around 11:00 UTC with a spike in bytes transferred and DNS queries (to 1.1.1.1), concentrated in Tehran and across a small set of ISPs/ASNs.
Key Points
- Timeline: Second nationwide shutdown began 2026-02-28; recovery signals began 2026-05-26 (≈87 days later).
- Traffic: Bytes transferred jumped ~15x vs. the prior week and peaked at ~40% of 2026 peak activity.
- DNS: Queries to Cloudflare’s resolver (1.1.1.1) spiked, confirming more users are making requests.
- Geography & Networks: ~91.6% of HTTP requests originated in Tehran; major ASN increases observed for TCI, IranCell, RighTel, MCCI.
- IPv6: Announced IPv6 address space and IPv6 traffic remain effectively zero; IPv4 announcements stayed present, suggesting filtering/whitelisting rather than full BGP withdrawal.
- Risk: Previous brief recoveries in January reversed quickly — this partial restoration may be temporary.
Implications for engineers
- Monitoring: Continue active measurement of traffic volumes, DNS query rates, and BGP announcements for both IPv4 and IPv6 to detect reversals.
- Routing & Filtering: Investigate application-layer filtering or whitelist behavior if integrating services to Iranian networks; do not assume full connectivity based on IPv4 route presence alone.
- Operational readiness: Prepare for regional variability (Tehran-heavy recovery) and potential service interruptions; use DNS telemetry and ASN-level metrics as early indicators.
Next steps
- Watch Cloudflare Radar and public DNS telemetry for sustained trends over several days.
- Treat current recovery as partial and fragile until traffic consistently approaches pre-shutdown baselines.