A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns
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Re: A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns
#2I appreciate the final paragraphs which suggest a solid method for those inside the country and under this oppressive regime to remain connected without surveillance. I wonder how many are up to this, and what active resistance or movements inside the country look like these days.
Re: A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns
#3I wish this article went into more details on what the "National Information Network" is. I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off.
Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are.
It's simply not going to be possible to meaningfully use the Internet unauthenticated and unapproved in a few years. Costs to reach mass audiences online will increase until only the big players can do it, and it'll be their platforms or nothing. There's going to be no room for anything that those with millions and billions of dollars don't want or can't make money off of in some way.
Overall, this makes me want to reduce the role of the Internet and tech in my life. I don't need the fastest data plan, latest PC, newest phone, or whatever AI trend is hot to use the apps I need for daily life or to line up events and meetings with others that I actually know.
Re: A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns
#4I appreciate the final paragraphs which suggest a solid method for those inside the country and under this oppressive regime to remain connected without surveillance. I wonder how many are up to this, and what active resistance or movements inside the country look like these days.
Does it, though? It doesn’t mention whether or not hosting your own encrypted messaging platform is illegal, what the repercussions are, or how to hide that you are doing so.
I found the whole article to be unfortunately light on both technical details and practical details, and certainly wouldn’t suggest that anyone use it as a guide.
Re: A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns
#5I appreciate the final paragraphs which suggest a solid method for those inside the country and under this oppressive regime to remain connected without surveillance. I wonder how many are up to this, and what active resistance or movements inside the country look like these days.
Synapse sucks to run and it doesn't minimize metadata collection. It's not a great choice unless you're running it outside the country where they can't seize the server (but then you have all the problems of not being able to access it when the country is cut off from the rest of the world). It's a pig on resources which means it has to be run on hardware that can handle it, barely runs on SBC's.
Other stuff is weird in their post and suggests they are speaking for Iranians without actually knowing any online. I know a few from the Cellmapper community and SMS is very much not expensive. 1000 SMS costs around 0.03USD worst case: https://irancell.ir/en/p/3771/tariffs-and-voice-packages-en
Finally it's not really that Starlink uses proprietary encryption that's special. They can use any sort of common encryption standard and there's not much Iran can do but locate and seize the terminal since they don't have the keys to it. I imagine at some point they were start looking for signal emissions in known Starlink bands and use that to locate terminals. Allegedly Russia has a detection system 'Kalinka' already built: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/tech/russia-and-chin...
Re: A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns
#6I wish this article went into more details on what the "National Information Network" is. I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off. Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are. It's simply no…
> more details on what the "National Information Network" is
Some sources [0][1]
> I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off.
Yep. Along with an entire ecosystem of domestically created and regulated search engines, DPI, centrally managed certs, AV, networking backbone, etc.
It's similar in intention to the Great Firewall in China, except much more restrictive.
Imagine corporate IT restrictions and posture being deployed nationwide on all endpoints, that's how these kind of initiatives tend to architected.
SSE/Zero Trust, DPI, Cert Mgmt, etc are all dual-use, and it's essentially a logistics and organization problem.
[0] - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1107324.pdf
[1] - https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38316/The-...
Re: A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns
#7I wish this article went into more details on what the "National Information Network" is. I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off. Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are. It's simply no…
I wrote a blog post which hopefully clears up the "National Network": https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-interne...
It is way more than just DNS.
Re: A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns
#8I wish this article went into more details on what the "National Information Network" is. I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off. Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are. It's simply no…
> Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are.
This is defeatist. You're probably right 'for the masses' but there will always be those networking and collaborating and bypassing whatever restrictions get put in place. I have online contacts in 'firewalled' regimes that use v2ray/shadowsocks or whatever the thing of the now is to get around the restrictions.
There's a ton of cheap tools now that can be used for running local or citywide networks, hams have their own packet radio stuff. There's now all those new LoRa networks that only really popped up in the past few years.
What I'm trying to say is the stuff is there and it's accessible, but it's only going to be a minority of people that use it just as it's a small minority that comments on posts like this (people like us) and even smaller yet again that write content on how to do it and create those tools to begin with. But it has always been this way....
Re: A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns
#9I wish this article went into more details on what the "National Information Network" is. I would guess it's at least a set of nationally managed DNS servers that will always resolve national IPs even if upstream global DNS is cut off. Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are. It's simply no…
I wrote a blog post which hopefully clears up the "National Network": https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-interne... It is way more than just DNS.
Is Google's AI Mode working? That might solve the problem you mentioned.
Re: A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wrote a blog post which hopefully clears up the "National Network": https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-interne... It is way more than just DNS.
Is Google's AI Mode working? That might solve the problem you mentioned.
Well, the internet is not national anymore (for now!), but isn't Google AI Mode US only?
Anyway, the only google service that did work at that time was google search as far as I know nothing else worked (no gmail, maps, etc.).