Laos experienced a significant disruption to its internet control plane on August 18, 2026. The event, which affected the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), lasted for approximately six hours and fifty minutes. The disruption began at 17:40 UTC and concluded at 00:30 UTC on August 19.
Technical Details
The disruption registered a severity score of 445, primarily impacting the BGP control plane signal. The BGP signal measures the visibility of network routing prefixes on the global internet. A drop in this metric indicates a reduction in the number of Lao network routes being advertised and seen by the global routing system.
During the event, the BGP median prefix count dropped by 1% from its peak. Concurrent measurements showed a 54% drop in the Merit Network Telescope backscatter signal, a proxy for overall network traffic volume. Active probing for ICMP reachability across IPv4 /24 prefixes showed a 6% reduction, while normalized traffic volume measurements indicated a 20% decline from peak levels.
The cause has not been publicly attributed.
Connectivity was reported restored by the end of the observation window.
About the Author
