Iran experienced a disruption to its internet control plane visibility in the early hours of August 17. The event lasted approximately three hours, beginning at 00:00 UTC and concluding around 03:10 UTC. The disruption was characterized by a significant drop in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) signal.
Technical Details
The event registered a severity score of 355, with the primary impact observed on the BGP signal. BGP is the protocol that manages how data packets are routed across the internet, and a drop in this signal can indicate reduced visibility of Iranian network prefixes to the global routing table. The disruption lasted for 3.2 hours.
Concurrent with the BGP drop, other network health signals showed more moderate deviations. The Merit Network Telescope (merit-nt) signal, a proxy for overall connectivity, recorded a 46% drop from its peak. Traffic volume (gtr-norm) also fell by 45% from its observed peak during the event window. The ping-slash24 signal, which measures active reachability to IPv4 network blocks, showed a smaller 4% decline.
Reported Cause
The cause of the disruption has not been publicly attributed.
Connectivity was reported restored by the end of the observation period.
About the Author
