Syria experiences prolonged BGP control plane disruption

Syria’s internet infrastructure sustained a significant, prolonged disruption to its control plane visibility beginning on July 26. The event, which lasted over ten days, primarily impacted the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), a critical system for routing traffic between networks globally. The disruption was observed from July 26 at 08:10 UTC through to August 6 at 00:30 UTC.

Technical Details

The disruption registered a severity score of 27,770 based on BGP signal degradation. The BGP signal measures the stability and visibility of network routing announcements. Over the 10.7-day event, the number of visible BGP routes dropped by approximately 1% from its peak. Concurrently, other connectivity metrics showed varying levels of impact. The ping-slash24 signal, which measures ICMP reachability across IPv4 network blocks, recorded a 10% drop from its peak. A separate backscatter measurement signal, which serves as a proxy for aggregate connectivity, fell by 46% from its observed maximum during the period. The cause has not been publicly attributed.

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