Internet Blackout in Syria Due to Student Exams
Continuing a practice that began in the summer of 2016, the nation of Syria ordered internet service cut for 4.5 hours today in an effort to combat cheating on high school final exams.
The outage began at 1:00 UTC (4am local) and lasted until 5:30 UTC (8:30am local) while the exams are distributed around the country.
If Syria keeps with prior practice, we should expect to see 8 or 9 more outages occurring at similar times of day over the next two weeks.
Doug Madory is the director of internet analysis for Kentik where he works on internet infrastructure analysis. The Washington Post dubbed him “The Man who can see the Internet” for his reputation in identifying significant developments in the global layout of the internet. Doug is regularly quoted by major news outlets about developments ranging from national blackouts to BGP hijacks to the activation of submarine cables. Prior to Kentik, he was the lead analyst for Oracle’s internet intelligence team (formerly Dyn Research and Renesys).
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