Iran Crisis Delays Twitter Data Center Upgrade

With the Iranian government blocking most contact with the outside world in the midst of the election crisis, Twitter has become an important line of communication for activists and protesters.

A network upgrade at Twitter’s data center was originally scheduled to take place Monday evening, but now the company has decided to postpone in order to keep the site active and available to Iranians.

Twitter’s data center has had to deal with an unprecedented load because of a traffic increase over the last several months. The upgrade is only expected to take half an hour.

There is speculation that it was not Twitter that made the decision, but pressure from the U.S. State Department. Twitter’s cofounder Biz Stone denied this:

The State Dept does not have access to our decision making process. When we worked with our network provider to reschedule the planned maintenance, we did so because events in Iran were tied directly to the growing significance of Twitter as an important communication and information network. We decided to move the date. It made sense fo [sic] Twitter and [our host] to keep sercie [sic] active during this highly visible global event.

Source: Data Center Dynamics