Somalia experiences BGP control plane disruption lasting 18 hours

Somalia experienced a significant disruption to its internet control plane visibility beginning on August 6, 2026. The event, which lasted approximately 18 hours, was characterized by a degradation in Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) signaling, a key mechanism for routing internet traffic.

Technical Details

The disruption began at 06:40 UTC on August 6 and persisted until 00:30 UTC on August 7. The primary affected metric was the BGP control plane signal, which recorded a severity score of 8,741. This signal measures the visibility of network routing prefixes on the global internet.

Concurrent with the BGP event, other network health indicators showed deviations. The ping-slash24 signal, which measures ICMP reachability across IPv4 network blocks, recorded a drop of 9% from its peak. The gtr-norm signal, a forecast deviation from expected traffic baselines, showed an 80% drop from its peak. The merit-nt signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity based on backscatter measurements, recorded an 88% drop from its peak.

The cause has not been publicly attributed.

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