Zimbabwe experienced a two-hour connectivity disruption on August 28, 2026, centered on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control plane. The event began at 16:55 UTC and concluded by 18:55 UTC, registering a severity score of 196.
Technical Details
The disruption was characterized by a significant drop in BGP activity, which governs the exchange of routing information between networks. The BGP median signal recorded a 2% drop from its peak during the event. Concurrently, other network health indicators showed more pronounced declines. The Merit Network Telescope (merit-nt) signal, a proxy for overall connectivity, fell by 78% from its peak. The normalized Google Traffic Reflector (gtr-norm) signal, which measures deviation from an expected traffic baseline, dropped by 43%.
Active probing for IPv4 reachability (ping-slash24) showed a 6% reduction. The cause has not been publicly attributed.
Network conditions were reported restored following the two-hour window.
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