In response to increased attempts from Iranian web users to use its anti-censorship services, Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIF) has resumed them to Iran. This step has been greeted by an extraordinary traffic spike. Amidst the political tumult, web users in Iran have rushed to utilize GIF’s protocols in order to obtain secure and censorship-immune channels of communication.
Considering the special circumstances in Iran, GIF temporarily reopened its anti-censorship services to Iranian web uses on 13 June. More than 120 million web ‘hits’ to GIF immediately followed on the next day, up from less than 60 million before the reopening. On 16 June, GIF protocols logged more than 200 million daily ‘hits,’ or 400,000 estimated unique users, from Iran. Unfortunately, server crashes caused by overload have been reported from GIF data centres.
Iran had been GIF’s second largest user base, only trailing China, until the end of 2008. The growing, word-of-mouth popularity of GIF tools, including FreeGate and UltraSurf, raised late 2008 demand to the level of overloading the capacity of GIF’s servers. Given the risk of worldwide GIF system crashes, major cutbacks of GIF’s “lifeline” services to Iran and elsewhere had to be put into effect in early 2009, resulting in a sharp drop in Iran-originated traffic and user outcries.
“Our technology is highly scalable, and we really want to provide our services to everyone in repressive regimes,” said Dr Shiyu Zhou, Deputy Director of GIF. “However, with our very limited resources we cannot now afford infrastructure large enough to do that. Our current service enhancement for the Iranian users will therefore be temporary unless we can find the support to sustain the operation.”
(Source: Global Internet Freedom Consortium)
