Recently, network monitoring data and widespread user reports have shown noticeable instability in overseas network connectivity across China’s three major telecom operators — China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile.
The impact appears to be broad in scope and is not limited to a single route or region, drawing significant attention within the VPS and networking community.
1. Wide Range of Affected Routes
Based on current reports, the ongoing network instability mainly affects the following international backbone and outbound routes:
- China Telecom:
- China Unicom:
- China Mobile:
- International mobile data routes (with more noticeable reports in certain regions)
Notably, CN2 and AS9929 are generally considered high-quality international optimized routes. However, they are also experiencing increased latency, packet loss, and even temporary connectivity failures during this incident.
This suggests the issue may not be simple route congestion, but rather a broader upstream backbone or international gateway-level abnormality.
2. Real-World User Impact
According to feedback from users across different regions, the current network issues mainly manifest as:
- Significantly increased overseas latency (especially toward Hong Kong and Japan)
- Abnormal route hop increases and severe detours
- Higher ICMP packet loss rates
- Unstable TCP connections with intermittent interruptions
- Further degradation during peak hours
Among them, reports from China Mobile mobile-data users appear particularly concentrated, especially in regions such as Beijing where instability is more noticeable.
3. Possible Causes (Unofficial Analysis)
As no official statement has been released yet, the following are only reasonable technical assumptions based on current network behavior:
- International Gateway Congestion
- Concentrated cross-border traffic may be putting pressure on international bandwidth capacity.
- Backbone Routing Adjustments
- Operators may be optimizing BGP policies or changing routing paths.
- Submarine Cable or Upstream Link Fluctuations
- Uneven international submarine cable load balancing or localized faults may cause rerouting.
- Temporary Traffic Scheduling Policies
- Priority adjustments for certain services could be affecting normal international traffic.
It is important to emphasize that no single definitive cause can currently be confirmed. The situation appears more consistent with a multi-factor, network-wide fluctuation.
4. Overall Assessment
Based on current observations, this situation is more consistent with:
A cross-carrier, cross-route, and cross-region systemic network fluctuation
rather than a localized failure affecting only one carrier or a single route.
5. Temporary Optimization Suggestions
For affected users or businesses, the following measures may help reduce impact:
- Avoid large-scale cross-border traffic testing during peak hours
- Compare performance across multiple carriers whenever possible
- Deploy redundant nodes in multiple geographic regions for critical services
- Prioritize providers with multi-BGP or optimized routing capabilities
- Use traceroute or MTR tools to identify packet loss locations
FAQ
Q1: Are all CN2 routes down?
No. A more accurate description would be that some international outbound directions are experiencing degraded quality. CN2 routes are not completely unavailable, but there are noticeable fluctuations.
Q2: Why is AS9929 also affected?
Although AS9929 is considered a premium China Unicom network, it still depends on upstream international gateways and backbone routing. If upstream routing changes occur, AS9929 can also be impacted.
Q3: How long will this situation last?
There is currently no official timeline. Backbone-level or routing-level issues can vary greatly in recovery time, ranging from short-term adjustments to longer optimization periods.
Q4: What should ordinary users do?
In the short term, users are advised to adopt multi-route and multi-node access strategies, avoid relying on a single route, and deploy redundant infrastructure for important services whenever possible.
