French Polynesia Connectivity Disruption Lasted Nearly Five Days

French Polynesia experienced a significant connectivity disruption affecting its internet control plane for nearly five days, starting on July 21. The event, which concluded on July 26, was characterized by a severe degradation in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) signal.

Technical Details

The disruption began at 03:20 UTC on July 21 and persisted until 00:30 UTC on July 26, lasting approximately 4.9 days. The event registered a severity score of 8,548, primarily driven by the BGP signal. The BGP signal measures the stability and visibility of routing announcements for a country’s internet prefixes on the global control plane.

Other network telemetry showed varied impacts. The gtr-norm signal, which measures deviation from expected internet traffic volume, recorded a 22% drop from its peak. The merit-nt signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity, showed a complete loss of activity for the duration of the event. The ping-slash24 signal, which measures active reachability of IPv4 address blocks, showed a more modest 3% decline in reachable networks.

The cause has not been publicly attributed.

Connectivity was reported restored at the end of the observation period.