Botswana Experiences BGP Control Plane Disruption

Botswana experienced a significant disruption to its internet routing control plane on July 20, 2026. The event, which affected the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) signal, began at 15:40 UTC and lasted for approximately 8.8 hours, concluding around 00:30 UTC on July 21. A severity score of 1,244 was recorded for the BGP anomaly.

Technical Details

The disruption was characterized by a sustained drop in the BGP.median signal, which measures the visibility of network prefixes in the global routing table. The signal remained at a constant low value of 666 visible prefixes throughout the event, representing a baseline level of control plane activity.

Concurrently, other measurement signals showed deviations. The Merit Network Telescope (merit-nt) signal, a proxy for overall network activity based on backscatter, recorded an 86% drop from its peak. The normalized Google Traffic (gtr-norm) signal, which measures deviation from an expected traffic baseline, fell by 61%. The primary Google Traffic (gtr) volume signal showed a 24% decline from its peak during the observation window. The ping-slash24 signal, measuring ICMP reachability across IPv4 address blocks, showed a minor 4% drop.

The cause has not been publicly attributed.

Connectivity was reported restored by the end of the observation period.