Bahrain clamps down on Web traffic as violence escalates

Computerworld - Internet traffic in Bahrain, the Persian Gulf kingdom wracked by a third day of protests, has declined by about 20%, likely as a result of more aggressive government filtering, a Web security company said today.

Protesters in Manama, the country's capital, were fired on earlier today by police. The New York Times has reported that at least five died in the attacks. The Bahrain military has since moved into the city.

According to Arbor Networks, a Chelmsford, Mass. supplier of anti-DoS (denial-of-service) technology, the amount of data going into and out of Bahrain is down approximately 20% this week compared to the traffic of the previous three weeks.

Arbor's traffic analysis was compiled using data from its ATLAS (Active Threat Level Analysis System) network, which collects Internet traffic information from approximately 120 carriers and providers worldwide.

"Data from 100 Internet providers around the world suggests Bahrain has significantly increased its filtering of Internet traffic in response to growing political unrest," said Arbor Networks.

Craig Labovitz, Arbor's chief scientist, said it was impossible to tell what Bahrain was filtering or blocking. "We just have measurements that strongly suggest some form of traffic manipulation," Labovitz said in an e-mail today.

Unlike in Egypt late last month, Bahrain's Internet infrastructure has remained online.

On Jan. 27, Egypt severed its Internet connections with the outside world by requiring the country's Internet providers to stop advertising routing information.

Renesys, a Manchester, N.H. Internet monitoring company, couldn't confirm Arbor's data -- Renesys focuses on routing, and was one of the U.S. firms that diagnosed Egypt's plug pulling -- but noted that Arbor's information has been "very reliable" in the past.

Bahrain's Internet traffic is off 20%, says Arbor Networks, and may be a sign of aggressive filtering by ISPs or the government. (Red line shows current traffic; Dark green shows expected level of traffic.)