Venezuela Experiences Brief BGP Disruption Affecting Control Plane Visibility

Venezuela experienced a brief but significant disruption to its Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control plane on Thursday, August 6. The event, which lasted approximately 45 minutes, primarily affected the visibility of the country’s internet routing prefixes.

Technical Details

The disruption occurred between 19:45 and 20:30 UTC. The primary affected signal was BGP, which measures the control plane visibility of a country’s internet routing prefixes. The event recorded a severity score of 280. During the disruption, the number of visible BGP prefixes dropped by approximately 6% from its peak.

Other network signals showed less pronounced deviations. The ping-slash24 signal, which measures ICMP reachability across IPv4 /24 prefixes, showed a minor 5% drop. The gtr-norm signal, a forecast deviation from expected traffic baseline, recorded a more substantial 67% drop from its peak. The merit-nt signal, a backscatter measurement that serves as a proxy for aggregate connectivity, fell by 42%.

The cause has not been publicly attributed.

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