KARACHI: At least two online tools have negated the government’s claims of uninterrupted internet services on Sunday and reported widespread issues faced by users while accessing social media services.

Dawn analysed data from these tools, which track network stability and monitor internet outages in real time, and found that users were unable to access or had limited access to several social media services on Sunday.

According to Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA), a tool developed by the Internet Intelligence Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, these disruptions lasted for hours.

The tool, which measures internet connectivity and detects outages “in near real-time”, found that the network remained stable at the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) level throughout the day.

A network expert told Dawn that the stability of BGP routes — which are unique identifiers assigned to major internet providers — means no widespread outage has been reported.

“Any disruption in BGP stability indicates a network-wide issue which usually occurs as a result of a submarine cable fault or fire at a data centre, etc,” the expert said.

However, despite the stable network, IODA reported disruption in the internet based on its examination of traffic to Google services.

Online tools tracking internet disruptions use traffic to popular websites and services as a benchmark to determine internet stability in a region.

In the case of IODA, it uses traffic headed to Google services — search engine, YouTube, Gmail, etc — from a geographic location as the benchmark to determine any abnormality in internet access.

IODA reported disruption in traffic to Google services from Pakistan between Saturday 10pm and Sunday 8:30am and then from 1:30pm to 6pm.

The traffic to Google addresses is an indicator of general internet usage, the expert told Dawn.

“For example, if daily an x amount of traffic comes to Google addresses from Pakistan and today it is not coming, this is indicative of a restriction [of the internet].”

The IODA data showed there has been “abnormally restricted” internet access between the two time slots, the expert explained.

Social media outage

The issues with accessing Google services, reported by IODA, were also corroborated by another tool, Downdetector.

The tool, which tracks outages of social media websites, reported persistent complaints by users about issues with Gmail and YouTube.

Downdetector, which bases its analysis on users’ complaints, also reported disruption in WhatsApp throughout the day.

Around 52 per cent of the users reported issues in sending messages, 27pc about voice notes and 21pc about the overall application.

Users in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar and other parts of the country also reported issues with TikTok and Instagram throughout the day.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2024