⚠️ Update: #Iran's internet blackout has entered its 40th day after 936 hours of near-total disconnection from the outside world.
The wartime censorship measure continues even as the US and Iran regimes each declare victory, with the Iranian people once again left in the dark.
@netblocks while this isn't technically incorrect from your point of view, "near-total disconnection" in practice isn't as rough as you make it sound. Iran is a country where VPNs and techniques to go around the blocks have been used by average citizens for years. I can confirm that my non-tech-savvy family has been reachable during the whole period including video calls except for a short period at the start of the war.
@Brie @netblocks as far as I understand the way the block is done, VPNs don't do anything since the main route to the global internet has been entirely cut off. So I would guess your non tech family must have some special connection outside of this block using another countries connection to the outside internet like a Starlink or a connection from a neighboring country
@liaizon @netblocks This could be the case, as their village is reasonably close to a border. All I know is that they got this working on their own using local and cheap technical means (definitely no money to use starlink but I imagine starlink endpoints might be part of a proxy chain), and that we are reaching them using apps Bale and Soroush. I'll ask my partner as I don't speak farsi, but I got the impression that they were regularly talking to friends and family deeper in the country too.
@netblocks the internal internet has been working this whole time (as far as I can tell) it's the connection from the Iranian intranet to the global internet that has been cut. If they are close to a border I could imagine someone savy might be supplying a whole village with internet from the other side of the boarder. I haven't seen reports of about exactly this but I assume this must be a common tactic.
@liaizon @netblocks
There is no such thing as "internal internet"!
@danialbehzadi @netblocks I guess intranet is the more technical term, but practically it is an "internal internet", not saying that this is ok, just trying to understand what is and isn't connected
