Syria experiences BGP control plane disruption over 1.5 days

Syria’s internet control plane experienced a significant disruption lasting approximately one and a half days, beginning on August 13. The event primarily impacted the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), a critical system for routing internet traffic between networks. The disruption was observed between 12:30 UTC on August 13 and 00:30 UTC on August 15.

Technical Details

The BGP signal recorded a severity score of 5,374 during the event. This signal measures the stability and visibility of network routing announcements in the global control plane. The number of visible BGP routes dropped by 1% from its peak during the observation period.

Other network signals showed concurrent degradations. The ping-slash24 metric, which measures ICMP reachability across IPv4 network blocks, recorded a 9% drop in reachable prefixes. The merit-nt backscatter measurement, an aggregate proxy for internet connectivity, fell by 36%. The gtr-norm traffic baseline deviation signal also registered a 44% drop from its expected level.

The cause has not been publicly attributed. The disruption had ended by the final observation at 00:30 UTC on August 15.