by The Commentator on 7 May 2013 21:01

Web security firm Umbrella Security Labs has reported that at around 18:45 UTC, the whole of Syria was disconnected from the internet.

OpenDNS resolvers saw a significant drop in traffic from Syria. On closer inspection, it says, "it seems Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet."

The graph provided by Umbrella below shows DNS traffic from and to Syria. Twitter remains relatively silent and the drop in both inbound and outbound traffic from Syria is clearly visible. The small amount of outbound traffic depicted by the chart indicates our DNS servers trying to reach DNS servers in Syria.

Various Twitter users are reporting the same.

Google's own Transparency Report confirms the same drop in traffic around 9:32pm GMT. All services, it reads, are "inaccessible"

UPDATE: This graph has been provided by Twitter user @JenanMoussa showing a similar decline in usage country-wide

Syria has experienced Internet "blackouts" over the course of the last few years. Some of the incidents have lasted less than one hour.

In November 2012, one blackout lasted approximately two days, effectively cutting off the nation from the rest of the world.

Internet monitoring service Renesys, which reported the November outage, also confirmed this one: "Renesys confirms loss of Syrian Internet connectivity 18:43 UTC. BGP routes down, inbound traces failing."

Users are also reporting a drop in connection on GSM networks, rendering some mobile devices unusable.