Ethiopia Experiences Brief BGP Control Plane Disruption

Ethiopia registered a disruption to its internet control plane visibility on Friday, August 8, 2026. The event, which lasted less than an hour, was characterized by a significant drop in Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) activity. The cause has not been publicly attributed.

Technical Details

The disruption began at 11:45 UTC and concluded by 12:30 UTC, lasting approximately 45 minutes. The primary affected metric was the BGP signal, which measures the visibility of network prefixes in the global routing table. The event recorded a severity score of 249, with the number of visible BGP routes dropping by 6% from its peak during the observation period.

Concurrent, less severe degradations were observed in other connectivity metrics. The ping-slash24 signal, which measures ICMP reachability across IPv4 network blocks, showed a 9% drop in reachable prefixes. The Merit Network Telescope (merit-nt) signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity derived from backscatter traffic, recorded a more substantial 39% decline from its peak value.

The disruption remained ongoing at last observation but was reported restored shortly thereafter.