Guatemala experienced a significant, multi-day disruption to its internet routing infrastructure beginning August 21. The event, which lasted approximately 1.7 days, primarily affected the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control plane, a critical system for global network visibility.
Technical Details
The disruption was observed from 08:25 UTC on August 21 until 00:30 UTC on August 23. The primary affected signal was BGP, which registered a severity score of 2798. The BGP signal measures the control plane visibility of a country’s internet prefixes to the global routing table; a sustained drop can indicate a reduction in announced routes or routing instability.
Other network telemetry showed correlated deviations. The gtr-norm signal, a measure of traffic volume compared to a forecasted baseline, recorded an average drop of 11% from its peak. The merit-nt signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity based on backscatter analysis, showed a 29% drop from its peak value. In contrast, active probing metrics for IPv4 reachability (ping-slash24) remained relatively stable, showing only a 3% drop.
The cause has not been publicly attributed.
The disruption had concluded by the end of the observation period.
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