Iran, throttling, M-Lab
author:
- 'Collin Anderson[^1]'
bibliography:
- 'paper.bib'
subtitle: Detecting Throttling as a Mechanism of Censorship in Iran
title: Dimming the Internet
---

Introduction {#sec:introduction}
============

*“Prison is like, there’s no bandwidth.”*[ - Eric Schmidt]{}[^2]

The primary purpose of this paper is to assess the validity of claims that the international connectivity of information networks used by the Iranian public has been subject to substantial throttling based on a historical and correlated set of open measurements of network performance. We attempt to determine whether this pattern is the result of administrative policy, as opposed to the service variations that naturally occur on a network, particularly one subject to the deleterious effects of trade restrictions, economic instability, sabotage and other outcomes of international politics. Overall, we outline our initial findings in order to provoke broader discussion on what we perceive to be the growing trend of network performance degradation as a means of stifling the free flow of information, and solicit feedback on our claims in order to create universally applicable structures of accountability. Furthermore, to the fullest extent possible, we focus our assessment on that which is quantitatively measurable, and limit attempts to augur the political or social 