If you can read this post, it means I’m super lucky that this post has published from my computer to GitHub, and after that, on the Cloudflare page.
As of 8 November 2026, we don’t have access to the internet in my country. In this post, I don’t want to talk about the politics or why this happened and who is right and who is wrong.
It’s not a technical post either. It’s just a story that we are the main characters in 2026.
Everything started on Thursday night. After work, when I arrived at my home. I found out that my internet connection is offline. Not only is the internet shut down, but also all the local websites are inaccessible.
For the first few hours, I thought it was like other times when they limit the internet access, and the access returns after a few days. But this time it's different.
For years, the government and the businessess try to make their apps and websites work even without the internet.
All websites moved their server inside the country and added OTP login using SMS, so if we lost internet connection for hours or days, like previous blackouts, users could access their sites and apps.
We also have lots of local services, for example, we have more than 7 local messenger apps replacing Telegram and WhatsApp. These apps exist so that when internet access is limited, people can use these apps to communicate with each other.
This time, not only is the internet is shutdown, but also all the communication channels are blocked. All website including the government website is offline. And you cannot send or receive AN SMS.
And for the calls, you can only call your loved ones from 8AM to 8 PM or 10 PM, and after that, when the night comes, you are all alone. You can’t text, you can’t call.
For sure, they can’t block all communications for a long period.
It's NOT NORTH KOREA
When you talk to outsiders, they compare IRAN with NORTH KOREA. But it’s not comparable.
In Iran, we have technology, and people life depends on it. If we didn’t have internet in the first place, and the people were brainwashed that nothing exists outside Iran. It was easier to live without the internet and modern communication technologies.
So please, when you read an article about Iran's internet blackout, DO NOT COMPARE IT WITH NORTH KOREA.
I think in Saturday, some government websites, and some official news agencies started to work, and after that, apps and websites that their server is inside the country started to go online.
Online But not working
As I said before, the SMS is blocked in the country, and you cannot log in to more than 95% of the websites. On the official and government websites, the login system only works with SMS OTP, and on other websites, it’s AN SMS OTP or Google login. And as you can tell, Google is not accessible here.
No Google, Hello to 2026 Website URL List
If you are old enough, you might remember the telephone books that people write their loved ones' numbers in that telephone book.
I saw lots of people searching for the official website URL. They all used Google to find the website they wanted since Google was not available. People start to create a website URL list, so they can access banks or internal websites by entering the website URL instead of searching on Google.
SMS is Back But Partially
After 2-3 days, OTP SMS for official websites is back, and after around 5-6 days, other websites can send OTP code only if their message pattern doesn’t contain any English letter; you can only send Persian letters and numbers. And every pattern must get accepted by the officials.
Normal life goes on, but digital life does not so much
My website stats dropped more than 80% in the early days:
And my Google search result 100%:
Google is Online not anything else
After about 7 days, people can access Google in some regions. It’s obvious in the picture above that when the Google access is restored in some areas, my website stats show improvement. But that’s not mean we have access to the internet.
You can’t call it the Internet.
It’s FilterNET+
We don’t call this the internet. Before the blackout, we had FilterNET. It’s the internet, but lots of social media apps and websites are filtered and censored by the government. On the other hand, lots of global services restrict Iranian access to their platforms because of the sanctions.
For example, we don’t have access to YouTube or Telegram because of the government filters, and Amazon, Amazon Cloud, and Google Cloud services because of the sanctions.
Because of those, we call it FilterNET now it’s FilterNET+. We don’t have access to a lot of websites that we had access to before the blackout, for example, Cloudflare is not accessible, while before the blackout, we had access to it.
Nobody Can Stop US
As I said, we are sanctioned from the outside and filtered from the inside, but NoBody can stop us. Our people adapt quickly.
For example, in the case of Telegram While it’s filtered by Government but, about 50M out of 80M people use it using proxies.
And that’s why this time they blocked all the communication channels. So nobody can share their way of connecting to others.
15 days passed, another 15 days are on the way
It’s been 15 days since the FilterNET that we used before is offline, and we only have access to a handful of necessary apps and websites. Google,Gmail, in some hours and GitHub are accessible for about 24 hours. We don’t know its temprorary or permanent.
They might BAN me and invoke my access to my Personal Website AriaieBOY.IR domain. But as I said NoBody Can Stop us. Not Filtering, not Sanctions.