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In the early hours of July 19th to 20th, 2024, there were several complaints from Internet users who were unable to access the Internet. Many talked about a blackout, others associated it with Microsoft's problem and Crowdstrike with limited Internet access in the country.
What really happened?
The problem that affected thousands of users worldwide had nothing to do with navigation limitations in Angola. Between the early hours of July 19th and 20th, there was an infrastructure problem that limited access to the country, with navigation for some ISP's (internet providers) has become slow and in some cases inaccessible. In these “some cases being inaccessible” one can also consider the lack of redundancy in international departures by these ISP's.
Most of the operators in Angola are still single-homed, which means that it only has a single international departure contracted. The technical disadvantage of being single-homed is that if the problem is with your operator that has international connections, then the domino effect will predominate all the way to the customer/end user.
The big reason they exist ISP's with single connections is mainly due to the purchase cost versus the sales volume and consequently the return on investment.
What happens to some content providers in these situations?
Most content providers use algorithms associated with latency to serve end users. When latency increases and passes a certain stipulated limit, they remove traffic from the country until the required metrics are reestablished.
One example we were able to see was the company Cloudflare below:
O screenshot removed on July 20, 2024 illustrates that the same company removed the traffic/content served in Angola for the Pop (nearest point of presence). When this happens, access to certain content and applications becomes slow and in some cases even inaccessible until the problem is resolved. On July 21, 2024, with the situation already restored, we were able to see the content being served as expected.
