Syria Experiences Prolonged BGP Disruption Over Eight Days

Syria experienced a significant, prolonged disruption to its internet routing infrastructure beginning on July 26. The event, which lasted over eight days, primarily impacted the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), a critical system for network visibility and traffic exchange.

Technical Details

The disruption began at approximately 08:10 UTC on July 26 and concluded around 00:30 UTC on August 4, lasting roughly 8.7 days. The event generated a severity score of 22,570, concentrated on the BGP signal.

The BGP signal measures the control plane visibility of network prefixes. Analysis showed the number of visible prefixes remained static at 4,792 throughout the event, indicating a sustained withdrawal or failure in route advertisement. Complementary signals showed lesser impacts: the ping-slash24 signal, which measures ICMP reachability across IPv4 blocks, saw a 6% drop from its peak, while the merit-nt signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity, recorded a more substantial 69% drop from its peak.

Reported Cause

The cause of the prolonged disruption has not been publicly attributed.

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