This post is presented in conjunction with The Internet Society.
During the second half of 2018, the causes of significant Internet disruptions observed through the Oracle Internet Intelligence Map could be clustered into a few overarching areas: government-directed, cable problems, power outages, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and general technical issues. Little changed heading into 2019, with two new government-directed Internet disruptions observed in Africa, alongside disruptions caused by fiber cuts and other network issues that impacted a number of countries around the world.
Government Directed
Initially covered in last month’s overview, the Internet disruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo continued into January, lasting through the third week of the month. Government authorities reportedly cut off Internet access in the country in December to prevent “rumor mongering” in the run-up to presidential elections.
An attempted military coup in Gabon led to a day-long Internet disruption in the country. The disruption started just after 07:00 UTC on January 7, as seen in the figure below, which shows clear declines in the Traceroute Completion Ratio and BGP Routes metrics, as well as a disruption to the usual diurnal pattern seen in the DNS Query Rate metric. Although the coup Continue reading