British Virgin Islands connectivity disruption lasted nearly 13 days
The British Virgin Islands experienced a significant, prolonged disruption to its internet connectivity beginning on July 31. The event, which lasted approximately 12.6 days, was characterized by a severe degradation in the network’s control plane visibility. Connectivity was observed returning to normal levels by 00:30…
The British Virgin Islands experienced a significant, prolonged disruption to its internet connectivity beginning on July 31. The event, which lasted approximately 12.6 days, was characterized by a severe degradation in the network’s control plane visibility. Connectivity was observed returning to normal levels by 00:30 UTC on August 13.
Technical Details
The disruption recorded a severity score of 36,149, based on the affected Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) signal. BGP is the routing protocol that manages how traffic flows between different networks on the internet; a sustained degradation indicates a loss of advertised network paths. The primary observation period for this analysis was from 18:30 UTC on August 12 to 00:30 UTC on August 13, capturing the final stages of the event. The BGP signal remained at a constant, reduced level of 148 visible prefixes throughout the disruption.
Other network metrics showed related impacts. Active probing for ICMP reachability across IPv4 address blocks (ping-slash24) showed a 7% drop from its peak. A separate backscatter measurement signal (merit-nt), which serves as a proxy for aggregate connectivity, recorded a 100% drop to zero during the event. The cause has not been publicly attributed.
The disruption remained ongoing for nearly two weeks before being resolved.
