Equatorial Guinea Connectivity Disruption Lasted Over Five Days

Equatorial Guinea experienced a prolonged internet connectivity disruption lasting more than five days, beginning on July 14. The event, which concluded on July 20, was characterized by a significant degradation in the network’s control plane visibility. The cause has not been publicly attributed.

Technical Details

The disruption was observed from 18:35 UTC on July 14 until 00:30 UTC on July 20, a duration of approximately 5.2 days. The event registered a severity score of 18,888, primarily driven by a sustained anomaly in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) signal. The BGP signal measures the control plane visibility and routing stability of the country’s IP address prefixes.

During the event, the number of visible BGP prefixes remained constant at 117, showing no percentage drop from its peak but indicating a persistent, flatlined state of routing information. Concurrently, traffic volume measurements showed a 23% drop from peak levels, while normalized traffic metrics indicated a 24% decline. Active probing for IPv4 reachability across network blocks showed a more modest 7% reduction in signal strength.

The disruption remained ongoing at last observation before restoration.