| Guide | GDE-090 |
| Topic | Internet outage verification |
| Domain | Digital infrastructure |
| Last tested | 1 November 2026 |
Short answer: Verify an internet outage by checking that traffic and routing data from Cloudflare Radar and IODA drop in the same place and time as the reports. A spike of complaints does not prove an outage, and a drop in data does not prove its cause.
What is an internet outage check?
An internet outage check is a test of whether a reported loss of connectivity is real, how far it reached and how long it lasted, using independent traffic and routing data rather than user complaints alone. It lets you separate a local fault from a national shutdown before you report either.
Outages leave traces in several independent data sources. Crowd reports record people who noticed a problem. Traffic data from large platforms such as Cloudflare and Google shows whether requests from a country or network fell. Routing data shows whether networks stopped announcing their addresses through BGP, the protocol networks use to tell each other which addresses they can reach. Each network is identified by an autonomous system number (ASN).
A shutdown is an outage someone ordered. Access Now defines it as an intentional disruption of internet or electronic communications for a specific population or within a location. Journalists, fact-checkers and human rights researchers run these checks to date an outage, measure its reach and test claims about its cause.
| • | Checking whether a viral "nationwide outage" post reflects a real event |
| • | Measuring the start, end and reach of a reported internet shutdown |
| • | Telling one provider's failure apart from a country-wide drop |
| • | Testing whether a platform was blocked or the whole connection was cut |
| • | Dating an outage for a timeline or a fact-check |
How do you verify an internet outage or shutdown?
Six free sources and seven steps take you from a single report to a dated, sourced record of what went offline, where and for how long.
All six sources are free and need no account for the checks below.
Downdetector: Free, no login. Collects user problem reports for the services it tracks and shows spikes in those reports.
Cloudflare Radar: Free, no login to browse. Charts traffic by country and network, and its Outage Center lists internet outages and traffic anomalies, each anomaly with a verification status. Email alerts need a free Cloudflare account.
IODA: Free, no login. Georgia Tech's Internet Outage Detection and Analysis platform tracks signals including BGP routing, active probing, network telescope traffic and Google traffic data, by country, region and network.
Google Transparency Report: Free, no login. Its traffic and disruptions section charts traffic to Google products by region.
OONI Explorer: Free, no login. Publishes open measurements from volunteers running OONI Probe, which tests whether specific websites and apps are blocked on a given network.
Access Now STOP dashboard: Free, no login. The #KeepItOn Shutdown Tracker Optimization Project records documented shutdowns by country, date, scope and the justification given.
What we tested: On 1 November 2026 we opened each of the six sources in a browser with no account, credential or login, using public inputs only: the Iberian power blackout of 28 April 2025 as a documented past event on Cloudflare Radar, IODA and OONI Explorer, the default 30-day view on the Google Transparency Report, and an Amazon Web Services status page on Downdetector. We declined non-essential cookies where asked and entered no search about any person. Nothing failed to load and no source was left untested. Cloudflare Radar, IODA and OONI Explorer returned data for the test event. Downdetector, the Google Transparency Report and the Access Now STOP dashboard are only partly confirmed: Downdetector shows the last 24 hours on its status page, the Google region selector did not accept input from our tool so no past event was checked there, and the Access Now data runs to the end of 2025 and we applied no filter.
The home page loaded with no login after we declined non-essential cookies. An Amazon Web Services status page opened with the status no current problems and a chart of reports labelled as the last 24 hours, so a past outage could not be checked there. | ||
The Outage Center loaded with no login. Set to 27 to 30 April 2025, around the Iberian power blackout, it listed traffic anomalies marked verified for Spain, Portugal and several of their networks, all starting at 10:30 UTC on 28 April 2025. | ||
The Spain country page loaded with no login for 27 to 29 April 2025 UTC and charted active probing, BGP and telescope signals. Read by eye, the telescope line fell from about 80 per cent to about 20 per cent and recovered over the following hours, while the BGP line stayed above about 90 per cent. | ||
The traffic and disruptions page loaded with no login and charted Google traffic for 1 October to 1 November 2026, with the United States and Web Search preselected. The region selector did not accept input from our tool, so no past event or other region was checked. | ||
The Measurement Aggregation Toolkit loaded with no login. A Web Connectivity chart for Spain from 27 to 30 April 2025 returned daily bars of measurement counts, with the first bar near 16,000 and the second near 9,000 read by eye. These count measurements, so a fall in volume is not proof of an outage. | ||
The dashboard embedded on the page loaded with no login, with filters, a chart by year and a table of shutdown records. The page describes it as in development, with 2,102 documented instances since 2016 and the original spreadsheet updated through 2025. The newest record we saw began on 29 December 2025, and we applied no filter or export. |
Six sources opened once each on 1 November 2026, from one browser and one location, with one test event: a snapshot of what each source offers, not a benchmark of data accuracy.
The Two-Signal Rule: Report an outage only when two independent kinds of data, such as traffic and routing, drop in the same place and time in UTC. Treat crowd reports as a lead, never as the finding.