The ATLAS infrastructure leverages Arbor Networks’ world-wide service provider customer base to gather data about Internet traffic patterns and threats.  Currently 246 of Arbor’s customers are actively participating in the ATLAS program, and are sharing data on an hourly basis.

The data shared includes information on the traffic crossing the boundaries of participating networks, and the kinds of DDoS attacks they are seeing. The graph below shows the cumulative ‘total’ traffic ( to / from) Syria across all of these participating networks. This does not show the total traffic into and out of Syria, this is simply a snapshot taken from the vantage point of 246 network operators around the world. As you can see traffic drops to virtually nothing earlier on today.  The actual traffic interruption is likely to have occurred between 1000 and 1100 today, the graphs show traffic interruption an hour later than this due to the variable, hourly reporting from ATLAS participants to our servers.

(UPDATED: as of 5:50am ET on 12/1/12)

As a reminder, this is not the first time we have seen a complete cut off of Internet access in the Middle East. You may recall back in January 2011, something similar occurred in Egypt,

UPDATE: Syria’s back online

via:  Arbor Networks