Somalia Experiences BGP Control Plane Disruption
Somalia experienced a significant disruption to its internet routing infrastructure on August 7-8, 2026. The event, which lasted nearly ten hours, was characterized by a severe degradation in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control plane. The disruption began at approximately 14:35 UTC on August 7…
Somalia experienced a significant disruption to its internet routing infrastructure on August 7-8, 2026. The event, which lasted nearly ten hours, was characterized by a severe degradation in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control plane. The disruption began at approximately 14:35 UTC on August 7 and concluded around 00:30 UTC on August 8.
Technical Details
The primary affected metric was the BGP median signal, which recorded a severity score of 4,555. This signal measures the visibility of network prefixes in the global routing table, indicating a reduction in the number of Somali networks being advertised to the wider internet. The event lasted for 9.9 hours.
Concurrently, other network health indicators showed varying levels of impact. The gtr-norm signal, which measures deviation from expected traffic volume, dropped by 82% from its peak. The merit-nt signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity based on backscatter measurements, fell by 93%. The ping-slash24 signal, which tracks ICMP reachability across IPv4 address blocks, showed a more modest 10% decline in reachability.
The cause has not been publicly attributed.
The disruption was resolved by the end of the observation period.
