Nigeria sustained a significant disruption to its internet control plane visibility from August 15 to August 17, 2026. The event, which began around 16:15 UTC on August 15, lasted for approximately 1.3 days before concluding at 00:30 UTC on August 17. The primary technical impact was observed on the network’s Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) signaling.
Technical Details
The disruption registered a severity score of 3,816, with the BGP signal showing the most pronounced effect. The BGP signal measures the control plane visibility of network prefixes, indicating how routing information is advertised across the global internet. During the event, the number of visible BGP prefixes dropped by approximately 3% from its peak.
Other network health indicators showed varied performance. The Merit Network Telescope (merit-nt) signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity based on backscatter traffic, recorded a more substantial drop of 44% from its peak. The Google Traffic Response (gtr) signal, which measures deviation from an expected traffic baseline, fell by 16%. Core reachability metrics, measured by active probing of IPv4 /24 prefixes (ping-slash24), showed a minor 3% degradation.
Reported Cause
The cause of the prolonged disruption has not been publicly attributed.
Connectivity was reported restored by the end of the observation period.
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