Over 55% of government-ordered shutdowns last a multiple of 30 minutes (vs. 15% of spontaneous outages), and 45% last precisely 4.5, 5.5, 8, or 10 hours (vs. <1% of spontaneous outages). The median recurrence interval between successive shutdown events within the same country is 1 day versus 39 days for spontaneous outages, with 67.7% of shutdowns falling exactly on 1-, 2-, 3-, or 4-day intervals versus 0.17% of outages.
From 2023-bischof-destination — Destination Unreachable: Characterizing Internet Outages and Shutdowns
· §5.3, Figures 10–11
· 2023
· SIGCOMM
Implications
Embed shutdown-vs-outage classification logic into circumvention tools using temporal fingerprints (duration multiples of 30 min, ≤4-day recurrence) to distinguish government action from infrastructure failure and adjust retry/fallback behavior accordingly.
Design tools to maintain persistent state or rapid reconnect logic for short-cycle shutdowns (median 1-day recurrence) rather than treating a single outage event as terminal.