Multiple sources are reporting that internet traffic to Syria just dropped in a way that suggests a country-wide outage. It's unclear what's responsible. Syrian internet traffic was cut off last year--for 40 minutes. Sadly, a broken internet is far from the most pressing problem facing most Syrians right now.

Sure, the Department of Defense designed it to be military-grade rugged, but no one really knew if the internet could handle a memorial service webcast of a pop megastar. Oh, it was brutal. From a network engineering perspective.

Level 3 has cut more than 50 percent off the prices they charge for "content distribution" — the premium Internet service charged to online video purveyors and other bandwidth-intensive sites. It's a blow to competitors Limelight Networks and Akamai. Because Level 3 owns its own telecom backbone, they can afford to undercut the competition. We love ourselves a good price war. [GigaOm]