Even that outage was fairly short-lived, with most of those impacted being redirected into Iran overland via Turkey instead of the usual undersea routes into the country, Cowie said.

He too was surprised that the Iran hasn't simply pulled the plug on the Internet. "Their Internet is so centralized it would be the work of two or three people to turn it off," and in a very short time, he said.

All it would require literally is for someone to disconnect the two fiber cables connecting Iran to the Internet, he said.