Based on incidents such as those reported in https://www.ft.com/content/24b8b7b2-9272-11e9-aea1-2b1d33ac3271, there is interest in spotting the occurrence and impact of large Internet outages such as may be occasioned by civil unrest. To spot the shutdown of a country automatically would take a bit of mining. For example, the country should have 2 or more target hosts and if all the targets in a country go offline (not reachable) in the same time frame then that is an indicator that something is probably happening and worth investigating. Of course, that assumes the Measurement Agent (SLAC) also was not down (due to maintenance etc.) at the same time. One can tell from say https://www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/sites-per-country.html how many targets there are by country.
The article (https://www.ft.com/content/24b8b7b2-9272-11e9-aea1-2b1d33ac3271) talks about mobile networks which we are not monitoring. It also refers to turning off social media which probably would not affect PingER. Also, there is no kill switch for a country, there are typically multiple carriers who will probably shut down at different times.
Some of the outages are all day(s) which would make it easier to detect. Shorter outages would be trickier. On the other hand, if we know of outages then we can look at the data around that time to see the impact.
Looking at the daily results for the last 365 days (on 6/20/2019), of the countries mentioned, in the article:
- Chad: We do not have a target in Chad.
- Benin: See https://techpoint.africa/2019/05/01/benin-internet-shut-down/. Looking at http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/pingtable.pl?file=average_rtt&by=by-node&size=100&tick=last365days&from=EDU.SLAC.STANFORD.PINGER&to=Africa&ex=none&only=all&ipv=all&dataset=hep&percentage=any Benin in the last 365 days had both its targets unreachable Aug 6-7, 2019, however that does not match what was reported (see https://www.voanews.com/africa/benin-internet-shutdown-repeats-pattern-government-censorship-across-africa, which was posted April 30th also see https://netblocks.org/reports/internet-blocked-in-benin-on-election-day-aAwqkny) which indicates the outage was April 28th starting at 11:00 am UTC). Note the Benin outage lasted 15 hours so it was not down for a whole day, thus we would miss it using the daily data. It would be necessary to mine the hourly data. Looking at http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/pingtable.pl?file=packet_loss&by=by-node&size=100&tick=hourly&year=2019&month=04&day=28&from=EDU.SLAC.STANFORD.PINGER&to=Benin&ex=none&only=all&ipv=all&dataset=hep&percentage=any it is seen that there is no data from 12:00 noon to 23:00 UTC for the two Benin targets.
Looking at the raw data, we get no response starting between 11:30am and noon and ending between 23:00 and 23:30 UTC April 28th UTC for www.uac.bj(lat=6.4410 , long=2.3527 at Universite dAbomey-Calavi, Abomey Calavi, Benin) and also for www.officedubacbenin.bj(lat=6.35, long=2.433 at Office Du Bac, Benin, Cotenu, Benin). See the Excel spreadsheet
. - Democratic Republic of the Congo: Looking at the analyzed data, the DRC (CD) does not appear to have any all day outages for either of the two sites monitored in Kinshasa (www.afrinet.cd and www.gbs.cd). There is a report of outages in the capital of Kinshasa (see https://www.albertinewatchdog.org/2019/01/31/new-report-on-internet-data-traffic-blocking-during-2018-drcs-election-reveals-that-the-internet-shut-down-during-the-drc-presidential-election-came-from-the-central-government/) the Internet in Kinshasa was shut down in the morning of December r1st 2018 UTC. I looked at the hourly data for the 2 Kinshasa nodes and www.afrinet.cd was not accessible between 11:00 am and 17:00 pm Jan 31st 2018 UTC.
Looking at the raw datawww.afrinet.cd does have an outage (see https://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/ping_data_plot.pl?monitor=pinger.slac.stanford.edu&sites=www.afrinet.cd&begin_day=26&begin_month=12&begin_year=2018&end_day=31&end_month=12&end_year=2018&plot=time&data=100&full=false&bin_width=1&data=100&debug=1). There was no response after 10:47 am 12/31/2019, and the next recorded response was 18:17 12/31/2019 (UTC). There was also an outage on 1/5/2019 after 9:17 am and 10:17am UTC, see below:
The other node www.gbs.cd does not see any loss of connectivity between Dec 27th 2018 and Jan 10th 2019. - Sudan: Looking at https://www.npr.org/2019/06/16/733158506/sudans-internet-outage?ft=nprml&f=1004 they report on June 16th, 2019 that the entire Sudanese network has been down for the last 13 days. Also, see https://netblocks.org/reports/severe-internet-outage-across-sudan-amid-reports-of-darfur-paramilitary-attacks-aAwq0oyM that reports that 70% of Sudan's Internet has been blocked. There are two PingER targets in Sudan but only one (www.sustech.edu) has worked for a long time (I will try and find another target and replace the nonworker) and the working one has not seen an all day outage in the last 365 days.
Looking at the raw data (see https://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/ping_data_plot.pl?monitor=pinger.slac.stanford.edu&sites=www.sustech.edu&begin_day=01&begin_month=06&begin_year=2019&end_day=21&end_month=06&end_year=2019&plot=time&data=100&full=false&bin_width=1&debug=1) there is no noticeable loss of connectivity (loss=100%) between June 1st and June 21, 2019 UTC.
Ethiopia Internet Disruption June 2019
According to https://twitter.com/InternetIntel following a coup attempt June 22nd the Internet in Ethiopia was largely unavailable for multiple days. This is shown below. Also shown are the outages are probbaly due to "Ethiopia traffic drops again (6pm UTC, 9pm ET time). While this may be proximately linked to grade 10 national exams, the use of exam leakage for political sabotage has mainly been the main threat."
Below is shown the daily packet loss (a dot means no pings were responded to) measured by sending up to 30 packets every 30 minutes.
Mauritania June 2015
According to https://twitter.com/InternetIntel there was a significant Internet disruption starting 15:30 UTC June 25th. Below is the daily packet loss or three hosts in Mauritania measured by pinging them rpm SLAC.
Looking in more detail at the PingER Beacon host MR.NIC.N2 (AKA www.nic.mr) we see:
Syria June 2019
According to https://twitter.com/InternetIntel reporting on June 23 "Another 4.5 hour Internet blackout in Syria beginning at 01:00 UTC (4-8:30am local) for another student exam. 6th such outage this month. Next exam (& internet blackout) to occur in two days." This is seen in the plot below of the Syrian PingER Beacon host www.iust.edu.sy.
