What we know about Iran's Internet shutdown

In late December 2025, widespread protests erupted in Iran, initially triggered by economic grievances but evolving into demands for political change, coinciding with a nearly complete shutdown of the country's Internet connectivity. This disruption was reminiscent of previous actions by the Iranian government, which has a history of cutting off Internet access during significant protests, such as during the fuel price protests in November 2019 and the demonstrations following the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022. The current shutdown began with a dramatic reduction in announced IPv6 address space on January 8, effectively isolating Iran from the global Internet, as noted by traffic data from major network providers like MCCI, IranCell, and TCI. Although brief windows of connectivity were observed on January 9 at some universities and through Cloudflare's public DNS resolver, these were short-lived, and the Internet remains largely inaccessible in Iran. Changes in HTTP traffic patterns and the usage of protocols like HTTP/3 and QUIC also preceded the shutdown, suggesting increased filtering and whitelisting efforts. Monitoring of the situation continues, with updates available through Cloudflare Radar and social media platforms.