Uganda Experiences Week-Long BGP Control Plane Disruption

Uganda experienced a significant, week-long disruption to its internet routing infrastructure beginning on July 15. The event, which affected the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control plane, persisted for approximately 7.1 days before concluding on July 23.

Technical Details

The disruption recorded a severity score of 145,146. The primary affected signal was BGP, which measures the control plane visibility and stability of advertised network prefixes. During the event, the number of visible BGP routes remained constant at 4,633, indicating a persistent but stable withdrawal of routing information.

Other network signals showed varying degrees of impact. The gtr-norm signal, which measures deviation from expected traffic baselines, recorded a drop of 49% from its peak. The merit-nt signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity, showed a 55% drop from its peak. In contrast, active probing for IPv4 reachability via the ping-slash24 signal showed only a minor 4% degradation, suggesting data plane connectivity was largely maintained.

The cause has not been publicly attributed.

The disruption was resolved by 00:30 UTC on July 23.