Niger experiences BGP routing disruption over 1.4 days

Niger experienced a significant disruption to its internet routing infrastructure beginning on July 28, with effects lasting for more than a day. The event, centered on the network control plane, was observed between 14:15 UTC on July 28 and 00:30 UTC on July 30. The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) signal recorded a severity score of 35,473 during the period.

Technical Details

The disruption primarily affected the BGP routing signal, which measures the visibility of a country’s network prefixes in the global internet control plane. The signal’s median value remained at 194 for the duration of the event, indicating a sustained, flat-line state of routing visibility. The event lasted approximately 1.4 days.

Other network health signals showed varying impacts. The ping-slash24 signal, which measures ICMP reachability across IPv4 address blocks, showed a 12% drop from its peak. The gtr-norm signal, a forecast deviation from expected traffic baselines, recorded a 31% drop. The merit-nt signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity based on backscatter measurements, showed an 88% drop from its peak value.

The cause has not been publicly attributed. Connectivity was reported restored by the end of the observation window.