Niger experiences connectivity disruption affecting BGP control plane

Niger experienced a significant internet connectivity disruption beginning on August 15, lasting for approximately nine and a half hours. The event, which started around 15:00 UTC and concluded by 00:30 UTC on August 16, primarily impacted the network control plane.

Technical Details

The disruption registered a severity score of 1,152. The primary affected metric was the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) median signal, which measures the control plane visibility of network prefixes. The BGP signal remained stable at a value of 194 throughout the event window.

Other measurement signals showed varying degrees of impact. The gtr-norm signal, which tracks deviation from an expected traffic baseline, recorded an average value of 0.89, representing a 22% drop from its peak. Active probing for ICMP reachability across IPv4 /24 prefixes, measured by the ping-slash24 signal, showed an average of 48.67, a 13% decline from its peak. The merit-nt signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity based on backscatter measurements, saw a more pronounced average drop of 95% from its peak.

The cause has not been publicly attributed.

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