Mali Experiences Prolonged BGP Control Plane Disruption

Mali experienced a significant and prolonged disruption to its Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control plane visibility, lasting over twelve days. The disruption began on July 30 and concluded on August 12, affecting the routing announcements for the country’s internet prefixes.

Technical Details

The BGP disruption recorded a severity score of 19,903. The BGP signal measures the stability and visibility of routing announcements for a country’s IP address blocks on the global internet. During the event, the number of visible BGP routes for Mali remained at a constant low of 347, indicating a sustained reduction in the number of network paths advertised to the global routing table.

Other network metrics showed varied performance. The ping-slash24 signal, which measures ICMP reachability across IPv4 network blocks, showed a minor 5% degradation. The gtr-norm signal, a normalized measure of traffic flow, recorded a more significant 66% drop from its peak. The merit-nt signal, a backscatter measurement that serves as a proxy for aggregate connectivity, fell by 52%.

The cause has not been publicly attributed.

Connectivity was reported restored at the end of the observation period.