Internet connectivity in Lebanon impacted following blast

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Network data from the NetBlocks internet observatory confirm that internet connectivity in Lebanon has significantly fallen following reports of an explosion on Tuesday 4 August 2020, with the outage ongoing as of 1:00 p.m. UTC Wednesday. The incident may impact communications with victims and eyewitnesses on location.

The bulk of the outage’s impact is provisionally attributed to the impact of the blast on nearby infrastructure, with lesser secondary impacts attributed to subsequent power outages.

Damage to network equipment, fiber data lines and/or power cuts have known network impacts similar to those observed during the present incident.

Affected networks have been previously stable and internet outage timings appear to correspond with estimated timings for the blast.

The Lebanese Red Cross reported it had dispatched more than 30 teams following the incident. News sources cite scores of casualties and describe significant damage to homes and businesses as rescue operations continue.

Lebanon internet connectivity: Stacked lines represent connectivity levels of individual autonomous networksFurther reading:

Methodology

NetBlocks diffscans, which map the IP address space of a country in real time, show internet connectivity levels and corresponding outages. Purposeful internet outages may have a distinct network pattern used by NetBlocks to determine and attribute the root cause of an outage, a process known as attribution which follows detection and classification stages.

A summary of data visualizations used in this report:

  • Network Connectivity (National): Internet providers and networks serving the affected region are visualized in a stacked time-series histogram to identify the start and end times of an internet outage event. Scales on the y-axis are adjusted to match localized maxima while minima indicate periods when networks became unreachable. The x-axis represents Universal Coordinated time (GMT+0).
    • Standard: Connectivity levels on the y-axis correspond directly to the observed number of reachable connections, as with National Connectivity charts.

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