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What Took the Internet Offline in Q3 2026: Exam Shutdowns, Blackouts, and Typhoons

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Hi everyone, Shii-chan here! Today I read Cloudflare Radar's quarterly report, and there really are a lot of reasons the Internet goes down.

Cloudflare Blog blog.cloudflare.com

What was announced?

In the Cloudflare Blog, a review of what took the Internet offline in the third quarter of 2026 was published. It analyzes global disruptions observed by Cloudflare Radar, such as power failures, natural disasters, and government shutdowns.

Why it matters

Internet outages aren't only about software bugs. Power, physical cables, and policy matter too. Looking at a whole quarter shows which causes are common and how quickly things recover.

What changes

This quarter, Radar recorded 49 disruptions.

  • Government-directed shutdowns: 19
  • Power outages: 14
  • Natural disasters: 5
  • Plus other network-level and conflict-related events

On recovery, 14 disruptions returned to typical traffic levels in under an hour, and 16 in under three hours.

Dive Deep

Government-directed shutdowns (19)

  • Iraq had 18 exam shutdowns, held 03:30-04:00 UTC and lasting about 15 to 90 minutes each. Three occurred July 1-8, and most of the rest between August 26 and September 28. Iraq's Minister of Communication confirmed them and pledged a digital exam system to end the need for them
  • Ethiopia's Tigray region had one, tied to renewed conflict, lasting 10 days. Tigray traffic dropped 100% and country-level HTTP traffic fell up to 30%

Power failures (14 incidents, 10 countries)

  • Cuba: 4 incidents, on July 6, July 14 (traffic down 18%), August 3 (down 59%), and a three-day blackout September 18-20
  • Honduras: on September 10, a power failure at an interconnection facility lasted about three hours and affected at least 11 major providers, with HTTP traffic down 63%
  • Ukraine: on July 5, a Sevastopol outage caused eight hours of blackout (HTTP traffic down 98%); on August 12, drone strikes on energy infrastructure caused a 10-hour disruption (down up to 95%)
  • Others: Eswatini (planned load-shedding), Botswana, Tajikistan, Kenya, Saint Lucia, Georgia, and Gabon
  • Separately, on August 13 a cooling failure at a Phoenix data center caused a near-total traffic drop for Namecheap (AS22612)

Natural disasters

  • Guam: Super Typhoon Bavi, less than three months after Typhoon Sinlaku. Downed lines left about 25% of distribution feeders online at one point, and traffic took several days to recover
  • Japan: a magnitude 7.1 earthquake, with evacuation orders for about 150,000 people in Kumamoto. Desktop traffic was affected, while mobile was largely unaffected
  • Colombia: a magnitude 7.4 earthquake in August; fiber damage caused a four-and-a-half-day disruption
  • Nepal: flash floods on August 26 caused a two-hour outage, with HTTP traffic down up to 18%

Conflict and political events, and network-level outages

  • Russia's Far East (September 19): fiber damage during nationwide elections disrupted connectivity in Chukotka, Magadan Oblast, Kamchatka Krai, and Sakhalin Oblast. Rostelecom called the damage deliberate and said backup channels restored service. Radar can't confirm a link to the elections
  • Network-level outages also hit One Communications (Guyana), MEO (Portugal), Digicel Haiti, TurkNet (Turkey), and Fanap Telecom (Iran)

Wrap-up

  • Radar saw 49 disruptions in Q3 2026, mostly government shutdowns (19), power outages (14), and natural disasters (5)
  • Most government shutdowns were Iraq's exam shutdowns
  • Power and physical cables remain weak points for the Internet
  • 14 recovered in under an hour and 16 in under three hours

A good read for anyone thinking about network operations, availability, and business continuity!

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