Ethiopia experiences brief BGP control plane disruption

Ethiopia experienced a brief but significant disruption to its internet routing infrastructure on Friday, July 11, 2026. The event, which affected the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control plane, lasted approximately one hour and twenty-five minutes, beginning at 12:10 UTC and concluding by 13:35 UTC.

Technical Details

The disruption registered a severity score of 468, with the primary impact observed on the BGP signal. This signal measures the visibility of network prefixes in the global routing table, indicating a reduction in control plane stability. During the event, the number of visible BGP routes dropped by 6% from its peak. Concurrently, a 43% drop was recorded in the Merit Network Telescope (merit-nt) signal, a proxy for overall network activity and backscatter traffic. Active probing for IPv4 reachability (ping-slash24) showed a 9% reduction in responsive networks.

The cause has not been publicly attributed.

Routing stability was reported restored by the end of the observation period.