Dimming the Internet: Detecting Throttling as a Mechanism of Censorship in Iran

Abstract

In the days immediately following the contested June 2009 Presidential election, Iranians attempting to reach news content and social media platforms were subject to unprecedented levels of the degradation, blocking and jamming of communications channels. Rather than shut down networks, which would draw attention and controversy, the government was rumored to have slowed connection speeds to rates that would render the Internet nearly unusable, especially for the consumption and distribution of multimedia content. Since, political upheavals elsewhere have been associated with headlines such as "High usage slows down Internet in Bahrain" and "Syrian Internet slows during Friday protests once again," with further rumors linking poor connectivity with political instability in Myanmar and Tibet. For governments threatened by public expression, the throttling of Internet connectivity appears to be an increasingly preferred and less detectable method of stifling the free flow of information. In order to assess this perceived trend and begin to create systems of accountability and transparency on such practices, we attempt to outline an initial strategy for utilizing a ubiquitious set of network measurements as a monitoring service, then apply such methodology to shed light on the recent history of censorship in Iran.