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brief Internet outage in Bangladesh

This morning, from about 2024-08-05t04:50Z (10:50am local time) to t07:40Z, Bangladesh had another very large Internet outage. Fortunately, unlike the outage that began on 2024-07-18, this one cleared up after about three hours. I presume this outage corresponds to the resignation of the prime minster.

We hope for calm for the people of Bangladesh.

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major Internet outage in Bangladesh

Since around 2024-07-18t15:00Z (July 18,21:00 local time), Bangladesh has had a major,country-wide Internet outage. As of t17:30Z some regions see 97% unreachability. This country-wide outage seems to be in response to civil unrest and protests.

Here’s the view from Trinocular outage detection as of 17:30Z:

We wish the best for the people of Bangladesh during this unrest.

Update July 19 morning: A day after Bangladesh’s Internet connectivity first went down, it remains nearly completely stopped. Here is our view of Bangladeshi connectivity at 2024-07-19t14:40Z (20:40 local time there):

Update July 19 afternoon: USC/ISI posted an article about the Bangladeshi Internet outage and our work as ISI news, and an new NYT article about the protests.

The AP reports “A statement from the country’s Telecommunication Regulatory Commission said they were unable to ensure service after their data center was attacked Thursday by demonstrators, who set fire to some equipment. The Associated Press was not able to independently verify this.” However, the near-complete outage observed by Trinocular (as seen in the figures above) seems inconsistent with problems at a single datacenter.

Update July 19, 22:28Z: ISOC Pulse has a post about this outage, and reports that “In a press event on 18 July, Bangladesh minister for posts, telecommunications, and information technology, Zunaid Ahmed Palak confirmed that the government had ordered the shutdown. “

Update July 20: The country-wide outage continues.

Update July 21, 17:00Z: Although recent news reports suggest some government response to protests, the near-complete country-wide Internet outage continues.

Update July 22, 23:00Z: Another day with no externally visible change–all of Bangladesh remains inaccessible from outside.

Update July 23, 18:00Z: Beginning around 13:00Z (which 19:00 in Bangladesh), we see the first signs of Bangaldeshi networks coming back on-line! The figure below is as of 16:26Z and shows about half of the national networks reachable from outside the country.

To add about the root cause, the Deccan Herald published an article from Reuters quoting Zunaid Ahmed Palak, junior information technology minister, as saying to reporters: “Mobile internet has been temporarily suspended due to various rumors and the unstable situation created…. on social media” on July 18. Today, Reuters quoted Palak as saying that “broadband internet would be restored by Tuesday night but [he] did not comment on mobile internet”. This statement is consistent with the country-wide outage we observed, and the prior statement suggests the outage was a request of the government.

Update July 24, 13:00Z (19:00 in Bangladesh): It looks like nearly all Bangladeshi networks are now back online.

Update July 25: The July 25 episode of The Briefing, an Australian news podcast, discussed the Bangladeshi outage and its impact, interviewing us about what we saw.

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large Internet outage in the country Georgia

Starting on April 21, 2024, we observed a large Internet outage in the country Georgia. More than half the IP blocks in large parts of the country have become unreachable from the U.S., with the problem persisting for several days so far.

The timing of this outage is consistent with a recent resurgence of protests over the Georgian “Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence”.

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Large Internet Outage Around El Paso, Texas

On November 4th, 2023, we observed a large, 4-hour Internet outage around El Paso, Texas:

Trinocular’s outage report for west Texas on 2023-11-04.

News reports indicate that Spectrum had a cable cut.

Trinocular showed an outage from 8:40am to 1:05pm (mountain time zone), with an smaller initial outage starting at 7am (2023-11-04t15:40 to t20:00 UTC, possibly starting at 14:00 UTC). This outage was quite severe, affecting more than 40% of the local networks that we monitor.

Cable cuts are hard to deal with, and we’re happy that they were able to restore service relatively quickly!

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Large Italian Internet Outage

Recent news reports (for example, Reuters) state that Telecom Italia had a major outage on Sunday, February 5, 2023.

We see evidence for this outage in our Internet outage detection system.

It looks like there were two relatively brief outages, one at 2023-02-05t10:49Z (11:49 local time in Italy) and a smaller one at 11:33Z (12:33 local time). Our monitoring rounds time to about 11 minutes, so the actual events may have been at slightly different times.

These outages were nation-wide, apparently affecting most of Italy. However, it looks like they “only” affected 20-30% of networks, and not all Italian ISPs. We’re happy they were able to recover so quickly.

An outage at Telecom Italia on 2022-02-05 at 10:49 UTC in our outage detection system.

This event shows the importance of global network monitoring.

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Hurricane Ian Seen through Internet Outages in Florida

We’ve been watching Hurricane Ian move across the Gulf of Mexico as it approached Florida. It looks like it made landfall about 3pm EDT (19:00Z).

Our Trinocular Internet outage detection showed the first residential Internet outages starting around 2:20pm EDT (18:22Z) and they go up from there. Our most recent data (as of this post at 7:45pm EDT, or 23:45Z) shows outages from about 75 minutes ago at 6:15pm EDT (22:13Z) with network outages over 50% in most of the western peninsula.

Trinocular outages in Florida at 6:13pm EDT (22:13Z). Circle area is proportional to the number of networks that are out in each 0.5×0.5 degree geographic grid cell, the color is the percentage of networks that are out.

We hope folks stay inside and safe!

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Large Canadian Internet Outage

News reports (for example, at the Verge and Slashdot) mention a large outage in Rogers, a major Canadian telecommunications provider.

We see lots of evidence for this in our Internet outage detection system.

It’s big! Maybe 30% of Toronto and southern Ontario networks, plus a lot of outages in New Brunswick.

Ontario:

Internet outages in Ontario, Canada. The largest circle represents about 6500 /24 network blocks down near Toronto, about 30% of the /24 blocks in that area. See details on our outage website.

New Brunswick:

Internet outages in New Brunswick, Canada. The largest circle here represents 196 /24 network blocks down near Moncton, more than 45% of the /24 blocks there. The red circles are areas where most or all network blocks are currently out. See details on our outage website.

An update: Newfoundland also sees a lot of outages. Quebec looks in pretty good shape, though.

And it’s lasting a long time. It looks like it started at 5am Eastern time (2022-07-08t09:00Z), it it has lasted 9.5 hours so far!

We wish Rogers personnel and our Canadian neighbors the best.

Update at 2022-07-09t06:15Z (2:15am Eastern time): Toronto is doing much better, with “only” 10% of blocks unreachable (22808 of 21.5k in the 43.8N,79.3W 0.5 grid cell). New Brunswick and Newfoundland still look the same, with outages in about 50% of blocks.

Update at 2022-07-09t21:10Z (5:10pm Eastern time): It looks like many Rogers networks recovered at 2022-07-09t05:15Z (1:15am Eastern time). This includes all of New Brunswick and Newfoundland and most of Ontario. Trinocular has about a one-hour delay while it computes results, so I did not see this result when I checked in the prior update–I needed to wait 15 minutes more.

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congratulations to Erica Stutz for her summer undergraduate internship

Erica Stutz completed her summer undergraduate research internship at ISI this summer, working with John Heidemann, Yuri Pradkin, and Xiao Song on her project “Visualizing COVID-19 Work-from-Home”.

In this project, Erica developed a new Covid-19 Work-From-Home website combinng Xiao WFH data with our existing outage website, and adding new interactive drill-down methods to display additional information to the user.

Visulizing Covid-19 work-from-home: here we look at China, Korea, and Japan and pop-up information about Laiwu, China. The popup shows WFH behavior for that location for the first 6 months of 2020.

We hope Erica’s new website makes it easier to evaluate COVID-19 WFH changes, and we look forward to continue to work with Erica on this topic.

Erica worked virtually at USC/ISI in summer 2021 as part of the (ISI Research Experiences for Undergraduates. We thank Jelena Mirkovic (PI) for coordinating the second year of this great program, and NSF for support through award #2051101.

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network outages in Louisiana with Hurricane Ida

We’ve been watching the situation in Louisiana develop with Hurricane Ida with our Trinocular Internet outage detection system.

Internet outages in Louisiana at 8:30pm Sunday evening August 29, corresponding to Hurricane Ida’s landfall.

Data as of 2021-08-30t01:30Z, which is 8:30pm Sunday night August 29 in New Orleans, shows about half of the networks in the New Orleans area being unreachable (mostly IPv4 home networks). Following shortly after landfall, these outages correspond with news reports about widespread power loss. Current data is appearing on our Internet outage map.

We wish the residents of Louisiana the best and hope for a rapid recovery.