Iran Goes Into Ipv6 Blackout
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As Iran's internet infrastructure took a nosedive, speculation ran rampant about the cause of the sudden IPv6 blackout, with some commenters pointing to the country's ongoing protests as a likely trigger for the intentional shutdown. While some, like reactordev, suspected foul play or an impending attack, others, such as bawolff, argued that an external attack would be counterproductive, rallying the Iranian regime's support. The discussion was fueled by observations that IPv4 traffic also dipped, although not as drastically, with hvenev and syncsynchalt clarifying that the graph's scale was misleading. Amidst the debate, ronsor quipped that Iran's IPv6 blackout might simply be a result of the government's ineptitude in managing the newer protocol.
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I'd at least keep an open mind for a while.
They attacked Iran a little while ago. But now they are playing it cool like a cucumber?
It was advantagous for them to strike when they did, so they did. Its much less advantageous in this moment, so it seems less likely they will now. Or at least not overtly.
> But now they are playing it cool like a cucumber?
Well yes. Countries tend to do things they think will make them more powerful. Sometimes that means blowing shit up, but that is not always the right play.
One characteristic of v4 is it's somewhat reasonable to do a straight forward block on a range of addresses to shut down access. This is still somewhat possible with v6, but harder as there's simply a much larger portion of ip addresses that can be all over the place. It's theoretically a lot easier for anyone that wants to bypass a simple filter to grab a new public IP address.
You'd typically block an AS - i.e. every IP originating from AS12345. That's just as easy on v6 as v4.
With v6 this is not the case, a given AS# will typically have a single large allocation and can make it larger if they need to, it won't be sold and moved and an entity can't trade it in to get a different allocation.
But, it is a new skill, and you can turn off v6 at small cost if you're already ok with heavily restricting v4.
no its not, its easier to block IPv6 ranges than IPv4 ones.
if someone want be block my ISP, they only need a single /32 rule with v6.
A lot of anti censorship organizations have trouble getting more IPv4 /24 for cost reasons or moving it around to different AS since they would go offline.
With IPv6, you can get IPv6 /40 from ARIN/RIPE no problem. You slice that up into /48 and just start bouncing it all over the place. When one /48 goes down, you move everything to another /48, switch providers if required and continue.
EDIT: They also tend to get multiple blocks as well for when ISP figures out to root /40.
No it isn't. Nobody is blocking ranges as they roll in, they're blocking whole ASNs at once. That's just as trivial with v6 as v4, actually v6 can be simpler because ISPs tend to have fewer large blocks in v6land.
Sure, Iran government may just decide to block that specific ASN but if it's they want to remain somewhat on the internet, they are stuck with "Smack entire broad ASNs and lose large chucks of internet" or "Block specific IP spaces."
Getting multiple blocks is harder - the RIRs will want justification for this, and would rather give you a single large block than lots of fragmented ones.
1.Talent pools in nation states are extraordinarily deep-- much deeper than they appear. Countries can suffer from brain drain for decades (or centuries!) but when conditions call for talent, superbly talented people somehow manifest.
2. The correlation between talent and conscience is weak. Nation states always manage to find superbly talent people to work on problems many of us would recoil from.
About 2. also 100% true: intelligence/knowledge is totally independent of any other trait.
Literally every country does this. It's just perspective whether an individual thinks it's okay or not.
If you're on the side doing the indoctrination, you probably agree with it, or are indoctrinated yourself. We all are to some degree.
The same people who who have unironically latched onto the idea of Meritocracy. A concept/idea that was literally conceived as a parody.
Looking at IPv6 its not 0 exactly, looks like probably censorship, only some devices allowed online? Some other comment mentioned there's calls to protest again today.
Does everything stop or it's mostly business as usual minus some things?
I would imagine hospitals, tax offices etc need the internet to work?
"The internet was out. Everywhere. Across the entire country. No cell data, no wifi, no phone service, and as far as I could tell, there are no landlines in Afghanistan [...] But now the blackout was total. Our waiter was complaining to my guide that he couldn’t contact his mother in a western province. I saw other people in the crowded restaurant fiddling with their phones and looking annoyed. I asked my guide what he thought was going on. He shrugged."
"Without internet and phones, people can’t talk to loved ones, businesses can’t function, trade can’t function, and even government offices can’t function. Only the Taliban with their well-established network of short-wave radios can function. But still, if the internet remains off long enough in Afghanistan, the country’s economy and society may very well collapse. Afghans couldn’t get money from banks. Soon enough, would food stop being delivered to cities?"
https://mattlakeman.org/2026/01/05/notes-on-afghanistan/#
[1] https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/conferences/RRB/Pages/Starlink....
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cre28d2j2zxo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-Ukrain...
Scroll down to Russian use.
Starlink receivers have been found in use in drones by both sides in the war.
There's a lot of Open Source intel on this.
As for use in long range strike UAVs I'm sure ukrainian units have specially registered units that will work anywhere but again, Russian long range kamikaze drones you have a smuggled unit that only activates once on ukrainian territory and be used for terminal guidance or reconnaissance. By the time the system spots a new terminal moving quickly in the wrong place the thing would have rammed into a civilian building somewhere.
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/2009240533944947050
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-starlink-ukraine-gur-elon-mu...
https://kyivindependent.com/nearly-half-of-usaid-starlink-te...
Also, as I understand it, a big part of the reason USAID was fed "into the woodchipper" was because they were investigating SpaceX over Russian use of Starlink - see https://gizmodo.com/elon-musks-enemy-usaid-was-investigating...
The article you linked contains literally nothing supporting your accusation. Instead, it talks about an investigation targeting the aid recipient:
>The USAID Office of Inspector General, Inspections and Evaluations Division, is initiating an inspection of USAID’s oversight of Starlink satellite terminals provided to the Government of Ukraine. Our objectives are to determine how (1) the Government of Ukraine used the USAID-provided Starlink terminals, and (2) USAID monitored the Government of Ukraine’s use of USAID-provided Starlink terminals
Thank God for the incompetence. It's like we're doing "Clown Show Mussolini".
Except when Starlink themselves cutoff access to the Ukrainians.
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-musk...
> The biography, due out on Tuesday, alleges Musk ordered Starlink engineers to turn off service in the area of the attack because of his concern that Vladimir Putin would respond with nuclear weapons to a Ukrainian attack on Russian-occupied Crimea. He is reported to have said that Ukraine was “going too far” in threatening to inflict a “strategic defeat” on the Kremlin.
The amendment on the article:
> This article was amended on 14 September 2023 to add an update to the subheading. As the Guardian reported on 12 September 2023, following the publication of this article, Walter Isaacson retracted the claim in his biography of Elon Musk that the SpaceX CEO had secretly told engineers to switch off Starlink coverage of the Crimean coast.
So maybe Starlink did turn it off or maybe it was just jammed in some way or maybe, well... anything really. All this says is the source retracts the claim and The Guardian doesn't clarify beyond that.
you might start with Mezha, Channel 24, and TSN. arm yourself with a translator.
Thanks to mcintyre1994 for noting the link in the retraction does actually go into the details of why the author retracted the claim https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/12/elon-musk-biog...
> On Friday, Isaacson tweeted a clarification, writing that “the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.”
> On Saturday, Isaacson said that based on conversations with Musk, he “mistakenly” believed that the policy preventing Starlink from being used for an attack on Crimea had been decided on the night of the attempted Ukrainian attack. He added that Musk “now says that the policy had been implemented earlier, but the Ukrainians did not know it, and that night he simply reaffirmed the policy”.
> KYIV - During a pivotal push by Ukraine to retake territory from Russia in late September 2022, Elon Musk gave an order that disrupted the counteroffensive and dented Kyiv’s trust in Starlink, the satellite internet service the billionaire provided early in the war to help Ukraine’s military maintain battlefield connectivity.
> “We have to do this,” Michael Nicolls, the Starlink engineer, told colleagues upon receiving the order, one of these people said. Staffers complied, the three people told Reuters, deactivating at least a hundred Starlink terminals, their hexagon-shaped cells going dark on an internal map of the company’s coverage. The move also affected other areas seized by Russia, including some of Donetsk province further east.
[…]
> After the book was published, Musk denied a shutdown, saying that there had never been coverage in Crimea to begin with. He said he had, rather, rejected a Ukrainian request to provide service ahead of Kyiv’s planned attack. Isaacson later conceded his account was flawed. A spokesperson at Isaacson’s publisher declined to comment or make him available for an interview.
[…]
> As Ukraine’s counterattack intensified, Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 21, 2022, ordered a partial mobilization of reservists, Russia’s first since World War II. He also threatened to use nuclear weapons if Russia’s own “territorial integrity” were at risk. Around this time, Musk engaged in weeks of backchannel conversations with senior officials in the administration of President Joe Biden, according to three former U.S. government officials and one of the people familiar with Musk’s order to stop service. During those conversations, the former White House staffer told Reuters, U.S. intelligence and security officials expressed concern that Putin could follow through on his threats. Musk, this person added, worried too, and asked U.S. officials if they knew where and how Ukraine used Starlink on the battlefield.
> Soon after, he ordered the shutdown.
* https://www.reuters.com/investigations/musk-ordered-shutdown...
Since the original comment was flagged, the original link with the 2023 story with retraction:
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-musk...
A 2025 article, "Musk ordered shutdown of Starlink satellite service as Ukraine retook territory from Russia":
> KYIV - During a pivotal push by Ukraine to retake territory from Russia in late September 2022, Elon Musk gave an order that disrupted the counteroffensive and dented Kyiv’s trust in Starlink, the satellite internet service the billionaire provided early in the war to help Ukraine’s military maintain battlefield connectivity.
> “We have to do this,” Michael Nicolls, the Starlink engineer, told colleagues upon receiving the order, one of these people said. Staffers complied, the three people told Reuters, deactivating at least a hundred Starlink terminals, their hexagon-shaped cells going dark on an internal map of the company’s coverage. The move also affected other areas seized by Russia, including some of Donetsk province further east.
[…]
> After the book was published, Musk denied a shutdown, saying that there had never been coverage in Crimea to begin with. He said he had, rather, rejected a Ukrainian request to provide service ahead of Kyiv’s planned attack. Isaacson later conceded his account was flawed. A spokesperson at Isaacson’s publisher declined to comment or make him available for an interview.
[…]
> As Ukraine’s counterattack intensified, Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 21, 2022, ordered a partial mobilization of reservists, Russia’s first since World War II. He also threatened to use nuclear weapons if Russia’s own “territorial integrity” were at risk. Around this time, Musk engaged in weeks of backchannel conversations with senior officials in the administration of President Joe Biden, according to three former U.S. government officials and one of the people familiar with Musk’s order to stop service. During those conversations, the former White House staffer told Reuters, U.S. intelligence and security officials expressed concern that Putin could follow through on his threats. Musk, this person added, worried too, and asked U.S. officials if they knew where and how Ukraine used Starlink on the battlefield.
> Soon after, he ordered the shutdown.
* https://www.reuters.com/investigations/musk-ordered-shutdown...
I really didn't think it like this.
I hate Elon a lot. but I will hold my grudge some other day if that means that starlink can help outside world to know more and raise internal resistance and support.
Musk proved quite good at blocking Ukrainian Starlink access too, supporting Russia.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66752264
The above is for jamming directed beams in general. It is likely that starlink has a number of other jamming countermeasures.
Beamforming is essentially yet another way to achieve gain, just like one does with a directional antenna. The Starlink terminal achieves a gain of roughly 33 dB, which means it talks (and also listens) in the peak direction at power levels that are around 2000x higher than what one would achieve with isotropic antennas. 2000x sounds like a lot, but it is actually not impossible to reach. Consumer electronics sends at most a few Watts of RF power, but serious jammers of the type used by militaries can run kilowatts. If you consider the peak power used for brief moments of time then you can get as high as megawatts - the famous AWACS aircraft briefly flash half a continent at somewhere around 1 MW, with average TX power of single digit kilowatt.
Is there really is no way to reflect signals off the ionosphere out of phase so after reflecting they interfere into a higher frequency?
Sure, if you want to try that and bankrupt Iran even more via its militarry rocket program, you can do that and maybe destray a handfull satellites, provided you can actually hit them and the rocket/s does not fail. And you might even get a nice casus belli as a free extra.
Because the atmosphere absorbs a lot of energy of the laser beam and focusing the laser beam to such a distant target is not easy. So you cannot just use some high powered lasers, as it would be just a bright spot at most. It would be different, if the laser would be space based, but that is out of reach of Iran's capabilities. They might have anti satellite rockets, but using them against US property in space would create other problems for them.
Even Russians don't seem to be able to jam Starlink on the Ukrainian battlefields.
China, maybe.
And good luck targeting enough Starlink satellites...
A simple 3 element yagi has <1% of the power to the sides. It has more of the power straight behind it, but still 1% or so of the main lobe.
Iran has lots of rockets.
Iran also has basically zero of their own satellites in orbit that they care about.
Spacejunk is a highly asymmetric tactic.
Imagine trying to hit a specific speeding car by throwing a dart from another moving car, except Both cars are invisible most of the time. They’re moving 17,000 mph. The dart has no steering wheel only tiny nudges. If you miss by a few feet, you miss by miles.
Countries that can do this reliably aren’t showing off missiles they’re showing off navigation, sensors, computing. The weapon is the least impressive part.
Um no. Imagine rendering a highway unusable by driving a semitruck full of tire spikes down it and dumping them out the back.
No precision required.
If you actually manage to make it into an orbit (with a much much bigger and much more expensive rocket) you will most likely do the same (eg. not hitting the intended satellite) with the added bonus of littering random orbits over time and hitting random satellites.
And if you want to say "they will deny orbit for everyone!" - well, good luck without far too many orbital class rockets for anyone of their size to have.
Not to mention Starlink orbits being (as alterady state so low they are self-cleaning), GPS orbits being far too high to even reach, let alone to saturate with garbage & same for GEO sats.
It appears that we are very close to an unstoppable runaway process of collisions in space. On one hand, nice that we prevent rich guys from running away to other planets after ruining this one. On the other hand, a lot of services require GPS, it would be chaos if that were to disappear...
You can't get chain-reaction collisions to happen at such an outrageously high orbit. That amount of mass you'd have to put into orbit is just insane. It's like trying to crash the moon.
Kessler syndrome has little to no effect on trajectories only briefly transiting any given orbital shell. The collision probability of anything going straight "up"/"out" is negligible.
> On the other hand, a lot of services require GPS
GPS is in MEO, Starlink is in LEO. There's absolutely no chance any material will be propelled up to MEO via a series of even very unlucky LEO collisions, as far as I know.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/spacex-lo...
And any weaponized junk schrapnel a DiY iranian ASAP missile would deploy would be sub-orbital and would all come down in a couple minutes.
Scared cause it’s true? Ahhahaa no idea!
Compare that to the number of cell phone users which is very close to 100%. All estimates of the number of mobile subscribers or number of mobile phone numbers are greater than the total population.
And how do starlink recievers enter the country in the first place?
This is good that there is still a way to get censorship resistance even after all this perhaps joining it with other protocols which can work via bluetooth,wifi etc. and are more secure connecting to something like this, a secure internet access point could be developed but I don't know too much about it.
It doesn't seem much of a plan (very sadly, I wish there was) which could be uncensored that much, some other comment pointed this point too but if black market's the case, then they would just hide whoever is using this
They would also most likely be very less in amount, journalists etc.
But the average person, they are stuck without proper internet
I thought that there are materials which can build starlink and the only thing then you need is just subscription or something
It's just sad to see that black market is the only way.
It's usually smuggled parts if they're small enough. Someone outside of the country usually makes the subscription and they get paid somehow.
People in unfree conditions are crafty. Same with information. Suppressed information spreads using underground channels quite quickly.
For example, we knew almost immediately that there was some nuclear disaster in Ukraine even though the official channels didn't say anything for days.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-expands-sanctions-exception...
I don't know too much about starlink but is there a way that someone can pay for other person's usage and then build a starlink receiver or something from spare parts or like easy accesible parts from the world?
Because how would people get starlink device. I dont know the mecanism of startlink though or how it works
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here's an web.archive.org link if anyone's interested which works
https://web.archive.org/web/20250301050041/https://www.forbe...
Edit: WTF forbes still gives me a popup even in archive, strange, but its less restrictive overall in the web archive version so I am able to still copy and read the version
Starlink uses a pretty sophisticated phased array antenna, so not something you can easily build in your garage.
Social media is such a narrow lens that I would be cautious accepting that analysis at face value.
Does that make you feel better?
If you want my feelings, then yes, I do think it's chilling that people can satisfy themselves that a few select videos from a foreign area is enough intelligence to make a decision about war.
If you've never had the pleasure of working in a war zone after the troops have left then I think you should ponder the consequences of your analysis a little more deeply.
Starlink usually lacks the bandwidth to tunnel traffic very far. In most countries the ground station is in the same country. My bet is, a neighboring country, within reach of Iranian missiles. Oman and Turkey are listed but that data is old.
But its not about censorship in the usual sense really. Its about preventing peer to peer communication. With less than a percent of iranians having access to each other either locally or via foreign internet, they cut down their ability to organise significantly. Starlink doesnt offer a solution here. Starlink doesnt matter. Every starlink person could turn up to a protest and it would still be less impactful than previous protests.
You really think iran is going to bomb turkey (a nato country) over this?
Now if they actually did want to censor the internet, Suicide McBombervest or a missile or something would find that ground station. They simply dont give a shit.
The problem with starlink is when the taliban turn off the intenet, if you use it to concerning (tweet, talk to news channel, post a podcast), the governemt know.
One doesn't get to be the head of a business in a country like Iran without being a True Believer.
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