Iran Shuts Down Starlink Internet for First Time

We've moved the comments to that first link, which has the original article that this one points to.

That kind of seems like something we should not have been providing to them in the first place.

If it were impossible, China would've had reason to blow up their satellites in orbit. The US would do the same thing for Chinese satellite ISPs.

Jamming on such a large scale is expensive, but it's hardly impossible.

The title is wrong, as usual. This is a re-hash of earlier reports. Starlink is getting 30-80% packet loss, depending on where they're using it. Likely local jammers. But it still gets through.

Jamming or hijacking geostationary satellites signal is trivial for literally a team of 3 hm radio veterans with 10+ years of experience.

Jamming RF is easy in general. Nowadays we can even do beamforming so i guess it would be trivial.

The Russians have developed rather efficient GPS jamming equip., as we know, Iranian Gov't is partners with Russians, providing drone technology, so no great mystery where likely the jammers originated from.

Any satellite signal is going to be relatively weak compared to what you can produce on the ground. Inverse square law, and power limitations of a mobile transmitter.

It's fairly trivial to set up a transmitter that saturates a slice of spectrum at an amount of power that is ridiculous compared to a satellite signal. There are still AM radio stations operating that go as high as 50kW. The satellite transmitters aren't going to exceed maybe a hundred Watts, at a great distance, and that falls off at 1/(distance)^2.

There's a difference between possible and plausible. In the most absurd case, it was always a given that a sufficiently large faraday cage or a literal iron dome would block starlink from reaching anybody in iran therefore it was never thought to be impossible to block starlink. At best it's implausible but that would refer specifically to the construction of the giant faraday cage and the literal iron dome, not the concept of blocking starlink.

Both sides are using starlink, yes?

Also there's now guowang to contend with. I'm not sure how widely available access to it is.

I would assume both sides are heavily jamming the frontlines. But presumably long range drone operations are more likely to use it.

What do you mean, Russia has been doing the same thing for most of the war? The success relies on you controlling the territory, or at least territory close enough, so the results vary.

I don't think it will have much implication. Jamming is a two way street. You can erase some spectrums, but you are also creating massive electromagnetic beacon for home-on-jam ammunition.

However if you are a protester without any advanced weapons, then you can't do anything against that.

If the GPS satellites are above the starlink ones how is Iran able to disrupt the GPS signals?

It sounds like Starlink uses GPS to localize the receiver, rather than for any active step in the communication link. Since most receivers are static, I wonder if an effective workaround to this is for the receiver to just remember its last GPS fix for longer, or worst-case allow a manual location specification in lieu of a GPS fix.

Gps is free to use. Running your own gnss service requires an atomic clock and possibly separate transmission hardware, which is possible, but adds cost, volume, and weight.

According to [1], “[o]ne of the current generation of GPS satellites (Block III) weighs over 2,200 kg (4,850 lb), the weight of an average pickup truck. The body of these satellites are 1.8 m x 2.5 m x 3.4 m (5.9’ x 8.2’ x 11.2’) in size”. In comparison, “the current V2 Starlink satellite version weighs approximately 1,760 lbs (800 kilograms) at launch, almost three times heavier than the older generation satellites (weighing in at 573 lbs or 260 kg)” [2]

[1] https://novatel.com/an-introduction-to-gnss/basic-concepts/s... [2] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html

Musk tweeted a while back that the constellation could be used as its own GPS service, but it wasn’t a priority right now. Maybe later.

This whole stalink for military use (Starshield) was a scam Elon sold the military from the beginning. Just like his dumb ass tunnels and his self driving cars. He is putting the military at risk.

> Why can't they use their own satellites for this?

My guess is that it would be an international political nightmare to deploy them if they stated they are doing positioning system because of the military implications. Not saying that the Internet access don't have those but probably much fewer alarm bells.

That said, since they are lower and because they can sync easily with atomic clocks on the ground, I'm guessing they are a software update away from providing navigation.

This isn’t even true; Starlink can use the local starlink constellation for positioning and the option is available in the customer facing configuration specifically for GPS denied areas, where it’s been used for ages. Something else is going on here.

A CRPA should still work.

I think IPv4 services are still present no?

So like they are very heavily DPI censored though and maybe govts able to spy on any messages you send right now but I feel like there is a still possibility that for the average communication, they might still exist but although heavily heavily censored/bad and I feel like protestors might not be able to communicate (which I feel like is the question you meant to be asking)

https://radar.cloudflare.com/routing/ir

So TLDR: protestors must have a hard time sadly and they may be using bluetooth mesh or other tech, only they can tell after we figure things out but also lets say some major services websites might still exist after all if they bypass the dpi censorship for IPv4 services.

In my opinion, I feel like Protestors must be using mesh based technologies as you mention. We'll see what really ends up happening after we get some reports from Iran.

https://github.com/x011/smtp-tunnel-proxy :

> A high-speed covert tunnel that disguises TCP traffic as SMTP email communication to bypass Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) firewalls

You might be referring to Bitchat.

Maybe better for an after the brutal theocratic regime crackdown discussion?

The only working communication I see mentioned on X is Starlink.

I saw a comment yesterday from a user claiming to be in Iran. I think he said StarLink was usable. ( Maybe that’s changed, though. )

I wouldn't consider it funny though when you realize the gravitas of the situation though but yea.

I just wanted to point out that it felt rude to call it funny but I understand what you mean and what intention but please be more sincere about such issues.

> Seems they finally figured out a way. Seems like yet again, you shouldn't shout hello until you've crossed the stream.

Someone mentions that there is a huge packet loss but its still possible. Other mentions that its possible to do this in rural villages and there are many nuances. I genuinely dont know the technological reasons or know how of what it is or what the ground state of reality is and what's actually happening but I hope that starlink still works or can have a work-around for the activists. We will see in sometime what really happens in the ground state as I must admit I still don't know if its 100% censored or what the reality is.

But it's in extremely difficult to disrupt the signals across the whole country? I person go go out with a battery and setup a starlink terminal in the middle of nowhere in 2 minutes (exactly how I'm writing this post right now from Boliva)

Starlink uses beamforming with directional antenna arrays, so it should be rather difficult to jam compared to omnidirectional antennas. It's basically a dish pointed at the satellite, so the jammer should be in between to work.

Antenna arrays aren't perfect so it still picks up some energy omnidirectionally, but it should be possible to shield it with some metal plates in a way that only sky is visible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array

Russia seems to have been ineffective at stopping the Ukranians using it.

I don't own a starlink dish, but I assume one can log in and configure some things. It would be a nobrainer to have a way to enter coordinates and system time. Also the manual could have sane advice like recommendation to use "peace time" to establish the locations GPS coordinates and write them down on some sticker or so.

If it can serve a basic web page with a world map, it may be justifiable to include it for the price of the dish (yes will require some flash storage).

I think this is a major unforced error by the USG, of course we have seen plenty of those of late. There may be Israeli, American or other intelligence agencies present. But history has shown that spies can't just foment a revolution out of thin air. The Americans' first attempt at a coup in Chile, in 1970, failed. It was only after three years of US machinations and missteps by the Allende administration that Pinochet arose — Pinochet was given his fateful promotion by Allende himself! And that was in a "friendly" country where the US had many connections.

Iranians wouldn't be on the streets right now if the government had listened to its own water engineers over the years. But the new political culture in our government is more interested in braggadocio than achieving real change. I doubt that if the protesters succeed that Iran would become friendly to the West. At the same time there is probably a not too contrived worry among the Iranians that Netanyahu will seize the opportunity to attack if a political transition occurs. Bluster like this only hurts the cause.

Iranians are living under Islamic colonial dictatorship. Blaming this unrest on Israeli and US influence is absurd. And only exposes you as a sympathizer to the oppressive regime.

Is them the Iranian people or their dictators?

You pretty much nailed it, its all about bandwidth.

The emergency SOS feature is optimized down to the byte to ensure it can work with poor signal and low bandwidth.

Link budget cuts both ways. If your user terminal sucks, you can compensate somewhat - by building a larger, beefier satellite that has better antenna directionality and pumps out more transmission juice, and throwing the data rate under the bus. This is how it's done now.

Having a terminal that doesn't suck puts less strain on the satellite side and, thus, scales better. But for emergencies and serving middle of nowhere, "direct to cell" makes sense.

The hubris of US idealists. There's no packing up and leaving. If you leave your tribe you are dead. This was true 10k years ago and it is true again. If you weren't born under the US security umbrella you are nothing but an ant avoiding the boots of those above you. And the whole world is returning to mean once more. There's no packing bags, there's fighting for YOUR freedom or being a slave. Those above will always seek to oppress those below.

A politicide is occuring right now in Iran.

Agreed, but right now, I'm getting Bay of Pigs vibes from the whole affair. Trump baits the protestors into action -- don't worry, we've got your backs! -- and then hangs them out to dry.

I publicly beg people not to do this.

Sharing anything but the prompt you wrote is useless and arguably harmful.

I’m not against the movement, but the last time Iran had protests this bad was in 1979. It didn’t get better afterwards. It’s a huge mess and I hope they figure something out to fix it, but I’m just pessimistic.

I hope the movement succeeds.

I've been curious myself about why the activist class seems weirdly quiet on this issue.

On a quick scan of media feeds I've seen a couple of things that stand out (I do not confirm or deny how true these claims are)

1) Current Iran is a enemy of the USA and thus activists can't support the destruction of the current regime. Iran is able to create nukes so can put pressure on the USA in Middle East Politics (esp. Palestine and Israel)

2) The uprising and the Shah are CIA/Western Backed and thus supporting the protestors is de-facto colonialism/imperialism.

3) Contrary to popular belief Iran is not actually a Muslim nation, only the leadership is. The population is significantly more varied and people do not want to be seen supporting the firebombing of Mosques because Islamphobia.

I don't know how widespread these opinions are, but it IS very strange how I don't see more outrage.

I offer two possibilities:

1. Iran has frequent large protests that consistently get crushed. So while I assume the vast majority of Americans oppose the Iranian government, it’s hard to get worked up for the 5th, 6th time.

2. The US doesn’t support the Iranian government. We already sanction them. What additional support can US citizens lobby for? In the case of Israel, decreased US support would have a tangible effect. Unclear how increased US support for Iranian protestors would matter.

I have a less charitable and more direct answer. Right now there is a notion in Left that Israeli are the oppressor. In Iran large majority of population is Persian but MINO (Muslim in name only due to dictatorship). They are struggling to get freedom from the Islamic regime and getting some help from Israel. This flips the narrative in Left's mind (if they accept it) that Muslims can be oppressors too and that is untenable for them. especially because Left in Western nations has basically aligned themselves with muslims so its easier for them to just ignore it.

BTW its not just left here, I originally hail from India and you can feel the pin-drop silence from left on Iran there too. They just hope the rebellion gets crushed by regime like other ones and they'll pretend status quo.

My TLDR takeaway: Muslims only care about when they are oppressed & Left is completely aligned with them right now.

Because the Iranian regime was the one pushing that pro Palestine narrative.

Speaking from an American perspective, many left-leaning commentators I've seen are focused on the ICE situation in the states right now.

But that's the most optimistic take I can conjure.

I would say it's really about opposition to death and suffering.

The activists want the excessive death and suffering to end in Palestine, and they want to avoid death and suffering in Iran.

Many politicians want to use the protests as a pretext for military intervention in Iran, and my opinion is that they don't actually have the interests of Iranians in mind. There are many reasons to believe it will end up worse for both America and the Iranians than our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A valid response would be to say that you think abuses in Iran are bad enough that a military intervention is justified. My intuition would be to disagree with that, based on the results of past interventions, etc...

There are a lot of signs that the leader being suggested would be a king, which is not something most citizens in democratic nations would feel natural fighting for.