Blackout in Chile: what internet measurements say
27/02/2025
By Elisa Peirano, Alejandro Acosta and Carolina Badano from LACNIC
Last Tuesday the 25th, a power outage of such magnitude occurred in Santiago de Chile that it left millions of people without electricity and led the government of this country to declare a state of emergency and curfew. Although there are no official figures, the cut occurred where more than 80% of the population lives (in total Chile has 20 million inhabitants)
From the point of view of Internet measurements, we were able to visualize the situation through the RIPE Atlas probes installed in Chile.
Sources: RIPE Atlas and visualization from Observable
In the previous graph you can see the number of probes connected in Chile. On the afternoon of February 25, the fall of more than half of the probes is clearly seen due to lack of energy.
Regarding the geographical location of the probes, not only were some in the capital disconnected, but also some in other areas of the center and north, while those located to the south were not disconnected.
What is RIPE Atlas? It is an Internet measurement platform with global coverage that relies on the Internet community to connect probes to their networks and thus contribute to the visibility of the Internet. This platform allows you to monitor the network itself and do troubleshooting, as well as measure various aspects of the Internet. Atlas data is public and measurements can be customized to fit the needs of the probe host.
(Free access, no subscription required)
The probes are of 2 types: probes and anchors where the anchors are more stable and powerful in terms of measurement capacity.
The number of probes in Chile has been increasing, especially since 2022, as can be seen in the figure below:
It should be noted that of the 7 anchors installed in Chile, only 1 suffered from the blackout.
The views expressed by the authors of this blog are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of LACNIC.