Antarctica experienced a significant, week-long disruption to its internet control plane beginning on August 29. The event primarily affected Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing stability, with connectivity returning to normal by September 4.
Technical Details
The disruption lasted for approximately five and a half days, starting at 15:25 UTC on August 29 and concluding at 00:30 UTC on September 4. The BGP signal, which measures the stability of routing announcements for a country’s IP address space, recorded a severity score of 68,340 during the event. The signal showed no measurable drop in the number of visible network prefixes, indicating the disruption was related to routing stability rather than a complete withdrawal of address space.
Other key internet health signals showed less severe impacts. The ping-slash24 signal, which measures ICMP reachability across IPv4 network blocks, showed a 13% reduction from its peak. The merit-nt signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity, showed a more significant deviation from its normal baseline.
Reported Cause
The cause of the prolonged disruption has not been publicly attributed.
Connectivity was reported restored at the end of the observation period.
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