January 8, 2026
Airplane Mode, but national
Iran Goes Dark as Government Cuts Itself Off from Internet
A whole country on Airplane Mode: panic, memes, and families desperate to connect
TLDR: Iran shut off its internet amid growing protests, echoing a deadly 2019 blackout. Commenters split between urgent pleas to reach loved ones and dark humor, debating whether shutdowns stop organizing or just smash daily life, and asking how anyone can get messages in or out.
Internet lights out: Iran just pulled its own plug, and the comment sections exploded. Kentik’s Doug Madory — “the man who can see the internet” — tracked the blackout step by step: first the country yanked modern address routes (IPv6, think bigger phonebook), then traffic plunged, and finally, total disconnect. Cue chaos in the threads.
The loudest voices? People pleading for ways to reach family, asking if any backdoor still works. One user begged for help contacting loved ones, while others traded tips about phone lines, satellite text, and old-school dial-up lore. The snark squad showed up too, joking that Iran put the whole nation on Airplane Mode, and dubbing BGP — the routing system that tells data where to go — Big Government Panic.
Then came the fight: Is cutting the internet a show of control or a sign of panic? Some argued it blocks protest organizing and foreign eyes. Others said it backfires, wrecking business and trust, while news still leaks through. Veterans of 2019’s “Bloody November” warned this is a grim déjà vu.
Meanwhile, meta drama: multiple threads blew up on HN, linking related protest posts and outage charts. It’s raw, worried, and very online tonight.
Key Points
- •Iran disconnected itself from the global internet at 18:45 UTC (10:15pm local) on January 8, 2026.
- •The shutdown followed nearly two weeks of selective internet blockages amid expanding anti-government protests.
- •Iran severed all IPv6 connectivity by withdrawing all IPv6 BGP routes at 11:49 UTC the same day.
- •Inbound traffic to Iran began steadily declining from 16:30 UTC until remaining connectivity was disabled.
- •Kentik’s analysis draws on global network and cloud-agent data and likens the event to Iran’s November 2019 blackout.