Uganda Connectivity Disruption Lasted Over 10 Days

Uganda experienced a significant, prolonged disruption to its internet connectivity beginning on July 15. The event, which lasted for more than 10 days, was characterized by a severe degradation in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control plane, a critical system for routing internet traffic.

Technical Details

The disruption began at 22:00 UTC on July 15 and persisted until 00:30 UTC on July 26, spanning 10.1 days. The event recorded a severity score of 206,437, with the primary impact observed on the BGP signal. The BGP median signal measures the visibility of a country’s internet routing prefixes on the global control plane; a sustained drop indicates a reduction in externally reachable networks.

Concurrently, other measurement signals showed deviations. The Merit Network Telescope (merit-nt) signal, which acts as a proxy for aggregate internet connectivity by measuring backscatter traffic, recorded a complete 100% drop from its peak. The Google Traffic Report (gtr) signal, which measures traffic volume relative to a baseline, showed a 44% decline from its peak. The normalized version of this signal (gtr-norm) showed a 41% drop.

In contrast, active probing for IPv4 reachability (ping-slash24) showed only a minor 4% degradation, suggesting core infrastructure issues rather than a complete blackout of end-user access.

Reported Cause

The cause of the nearly two-week disruption has not been publicly attributed by authorities or major service providers.

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