Ethiopia experienced a significant disruption to its internet routing infrastructure on August 20-21, 2026. The event, which affected the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control plane, began at 20:50 UTC and lasted for approximately 3.7 hours. The disruption was recorded as a single event with a severity score of 1,213.
Technical Details
The primary impact was observed on the BGP signal, which measures the visibility of network prefixes in the global routing table. The signal recorded a drop in the median number of visible prefixes, with a peak-to-trough decline of 6%. Concurrently, the Merit Network Telescope (merit-nt) signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity, showed a more pronounced drop of 73% from its peak. The Google Traffic Report (gtr) signal, which measures traffic volume relative to a baseline, also recorded significant deviations, with a 55% drop from its peak and a normalized forecast deviation (gtr-norm) showing a 58% drop.
In contrast, active probing measurements for IPv4 reachability (ping-slash24) showed a relatively minor impact, with only a 4% decline in reachable prefixes. This suggests the disruption was primarily concentrated in the routing control plane rather than a complete loss of data plane connectivity for all networks.
Reported Cause
The cause has not been publicly attributed.
The disruption was resolved by 00:30 UTC on August 21.
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