Internet companies say Syria is experiencing an Internet outage after servers became inaccessible from outside the country, according to reports.
"On closer inspection it seems Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet," writes Dan Hubbard, Chief Technology Officer of Umbrella Security Labs, an online security company. Google Inc. is also indicating that its services have been inaccessible in Syria for more than two hours as of 5:00 p.m. EDT.
According to the Associated Press, Syrian authorities have cut phone and Internet service in select areas in the past to disrupt rebel communications when regime forces are conducting major operations.
"Syria is currently experiencing an internet blackout as of this afternoon," a State Department tweet said.
Umbrella Security Labs reported a "significant drop in traffic from Syria" starting around 1845 GMT, according to a blog post.
Internet monitoring service Renesys, which reported the November outage, also confirmed this one: "Renesys confirms loss of Syrian Internet connectivity 18:43 UTC. BGP routes down, inbound traces failing."
