Cloudflare reported that internet traffic from Iran fell to well under 1% of its previous level after a second nationwide shutdown began on February 28, 2026. Its later updates chart a partial, uneven recovery—but the available event-specific evidence here is from Cloudflare, not a matching set of measurements published by multiple monitoring firms.
What happened to internet traffic in Iran?
Cloudflare’s Q1 2026 review said a second nationwide shutdown began on February 28, as military strikes escalated. The company measured traffic at well under 1% of its previous level. That is Cloudflare’s traffic measurement; it is not a census of every person, service, or network connection in Iran. Cloudflare’s Q1 internet disruption review
Cloudflare also reported no significant change in announced IP address space when the shutdown began. That does not mean ordinary users retained normal access: a stable picture of announced routes can coexist with interrupted connectivity. A 2026 academic preprint describes how forwarding-plane null-routing can disrupt connectivity while BGP announcements remain stable, but its finding should not be treated as proof of the mechanism behind every outage or of this specific event’s cause. The study’s abstract
How did the reported recovery progress?
May 26–27: signs of partial restoration
Cloudflare said signs of restoration appeared on May 26, following an announcement by Iran’s vice president. In its May 27 update, the company described increases in traffic and DNS activity and put traffic at around 40% of pre-outage levels. This was a snapshot of traffic during an emerging, partial restoration, not a direct count of reachable services or people online. Cloudflare’s May 27 update
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Later Q2 review: a longer view
Cloudflare’s Q2 review described an 88-day shutdown. In that longer time window, traffic reached as high as 90% of its prior level before settling around 59% of pre-shutdown levels. Those later observations do not conflict with the roughly 40% figure in the May 27 update: the reports describe different points in the recovery. Cloudflare’s Q2 internet disruption review
Why monitoring firms can report different things
“Internet access” is not a single signal. Cloudflare Radar’s outage documentation says its records can identify location, affected autonomous system, outage type and scope, and likely cause. Causes may include government-directed shutdowns, severe weather, infrastructure problems, or filtering and blocking. A likely-cause label is an interpretation based on public information, not definitive proof. Cloudflare Radar outage detection documentation
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Other approaches observe different parts of the network. A 2026 academic preprint describes a multi-plane method using passive Censys scan data, active TCP reachability probes from five vantage points, and BGP analysis across RIPE RIS snapshots. These methods are complementary, but their results are not interchangeable: traffic volume, DNS activity, successful probes, and route announcements answer different questions. The study’s abstract
- Traffic: estimates activity seen by the measurement provider, relative to a stated baseline.
- DNS: shows changes in observed domain-lookup activity, which can accompany restoration but does not alone prove that services are reachable.
- Reachability probes: test whether selected destinations respond from particular vantage points; results depend on probe locations and targets.
- BGP announcements: show routes networks advertise, not whether users can successfully reach websites over those routes.
Before comparing percentages from different organizations, check what each measured, which networks and locations it covered, the baseline used, and the exact time window. Without those details, two figures may describe different aspects of an outage rather than disagree about the same thing.
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Do multiple monitoring firms confirm the same figures?
The event-specific figures described here—well under 1%, around 40%, as high as 90%, and later around 59%—are Cloudflare’s measurements and summaries. The evidence available for this article does not establish a contemporaneous, event-specific figure from another monitoring firm for the February–May 2026 shutdown. The plural wording sometimes used in headlines should not be taken as evidence that multiple providers independently reported the same numbers.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where to check the latest status
Cloudflare’s Iran dashboard provides traffic and outage views, and its data can change as observations are updated. Because live status is time-sensitive, check the dashboard for its current view rather than assuming that a past recovery percentage describes conditions now. Cloudflare Radar’s Iran dashboard
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