Route Analysis

Equatorial Guinea: The Country Whose Internet Crosses Eight US Cities to Reach Australia

Published: March 16, 2026

In the hierarchy of the world's internet, some countries are hubs and some are spokes. And then there is Equatorial Guinea — a country of 1.7 million people on the west coast of Central Africa whose internet traffic must cross three continents and eight American cities just to reach Australia.

Our RIPE Atlas probe in Bata, Equatorial Guinea's largest city, has recorded 542 traceroute measurements to Australia. Every single one follows the same extraordinary path: Bata → Lagos → Lisbon → Bilbao → Ashburn → Atlanta → New Orleans → Dallas → El Paso → Phoenix → Los Angeles → Melbourne → Sydney. The round-trip time is a consistent 386ms — and the packet visits more American cities than African ones.

The Route: Africa to Australia via the American South

Here is the complete hop-by-hop path from Bata to Sydney:

Hop	Location	Operator	RTT
1	Bata, Equatorial Guinea	GITGE (state telecom)	8ms
2	Lagos, Nigeria	GITGE	107ms
3	Lisbon, Portugal	GITGE	106ms
4	Lisbon, Portugal	Cogent Communications	105ms
5	Braga, Portugal	Cogent Communications	110ms
6	Bilbao, Spain	Cogent Communications	122ms
7	Ashburn, USA	Cogent Communications	193ms
8	Atlanta, USA	Cogent Communications	210ms
9	New Orleans, USA	Cogent Communications	216ms
10	Dallas, USA	Cogent Communications	225ms
11	El Paso, USA	Cogent Communications	235ms
12	Phoenix, USA	Cogent Communications	244ms
13–15	Los Angeles, USA	Cogent Communications	255–317ms
16	Melbourne, Australia	Aussie Broadband	392ms
19–22	Sydney, Australia	Over The Wire Pty Ltd	386ms

The packet touches three continents (Africa, Europe, North America) and crosses the Atlantic twice in spirit — once from Lagos to Lisbon, and once from Bilbao to Ashburn. It then traverses the entire continental United States from east to west before finally crossing the Pacific to Melbourne.

GITGE: The State Telecom That Reaches Lisbon

The most surprising detail in the traceroute is hop 3: Lisbon, Portugal — still under GITGE's own AS number (AS37529). GITGE — Gestora de Infraestructuras de Telecomunicaciones de Guinea Ecuatorial — is the state telecommunications company that manages Equatorial Guinea's entire international connectivity.

GITGE operates on the ACE (Africa Coast to Europe) submarine cable, which runs along the West African coast from South Africa to France with a landing point in Bata. The ACE cable connects to Portugal, which explains how GITGE's network extends from Bata through Lagos all the way to Lisbon — it is riding the ACE cable northward along the African coast and across to the Iberian Peninsula.

But GITGE's reach ends in Lisbon. At hop 4, the packet is handed to Cogent Communications, and from that point on, Cogent's North America-centric routing takes over. Instead of continuing eastward through Europe toward Asia and the Pacific, the packet is sent westward across the Atlantic to Virginia.

Why Cogent Routes Through Eight US Cities

The path from Ashburn to Los Angeles reads like an Amtrak timetable: Ashburn → Atlanta → New Orleans → Dallas → El Paso → Phoenix → Los Angeles. That is eight distinct US cities, traversing the entire width of the country from the East Coast to the West Coast.

This happens because Cogent's backbone follows the major US interstate fiber corridors. Their network does not jump directly from the East Coast to the West Coast — it hops between their points of presence, each of which is a major data center market. The southern route (Atlanta → Dallas → Phoenix → LA) follows the path of Cogent's fiber along the Interstate 10/20 corridor.

Each hop adds roughly 10–15ms, which is consistent with the speed of light in fiber over those distances. The cumulative effect is that by the time the packet reaches Los Angeles, it has spent 125ms just crossing the United States — nearly a third of the total round-trip time.

The Other Path: Bata to Japan via Cape Town and Hong Kong

Equatorial Guinea's Australian route through America is not the only surprising path from our probe. When Probe 60163 traces to targets in Asia, a completely different carrier takes over:

Hop	Location	Operator	RTT
1	Bata, Equatorial Guinea	GITGE	2ms
2–3	Lagos, Nigeria	GITGE	60ms
4	Cape Town, South Africa	GITGE	60ms
5	Cape Town, South Africa	Hurricane Electric	60ms
7	Marseille, France	Hurricane Electric	209ms
9	Hong Kong	Hurricane Electric	372ms
11–13	Osaka, Japan	Japan Registry Service	458ms

Instead of going north to Europe, the packet heads south along the African coast to Cape Town, where Hurricane Electric (AS6939) picks it up. From there, it crosses to Marseille via submarine cable, continues east to Hong Kong, and finally reaches Osaka. The total path is Africa → South Africa → Europe → Asia — crossing the equator twice.

This reveals that GITGE has at least two distinct upstream providers: Cogent for westbound traffic (via Portugal) and Hurricane Electric for eastbound traffic (via South Africa). The choice of which carrier handles a given destination determines whether the packet crosses the Atlantic or circles around Africa.

Equatorial Guinea's Cable Infrastructure

Equatorial Guinea has three submarine cable connections according to our database:

ACE (Africa Coast to Europe) — landing in Bata. This is the main international cable, running from South Africa to France along the West African coast. It provides the path to Lisbon where GITGE hands off to Cogent.
Ceiba-1 — connecting Malabo (the island capital) and Bata. A domestic/regional cable.
Ceiba-2 — also connecting Malabo and Bata, with an extension to Kribi, Cameroon. Provides connectivity to the neighboring cable hub in Cameroon.

The neighboring countries are considerably better connected. Nigeria has the ACE cable plus 2Africa, the world's longest submarine cable. Cameroon has five cables including SAT-3/WASC, WACS, and SAIL (the South Atlantic Inter Link to Brazil). Gabon has ACE, 2Africa, SAT-3/WASC, and the Maroc Telecom cable.

Equatorial Guinea's single international cable (ACE) means all its global connectivity flows through one pipe. The Ceiba cables provide domestic resilience between Malabo and Bata, but for international traffic, if ACE goes down, the country goes dark — or falls back to satellite.

The Lagos Anomaly

Look at the RTT progression from Bata to Lagos: the packet goes from 8ms (Bata) to 107ms (Lagos) — a 99ms jump for a distance of roughly 750 km. For fiber optic, that distance should take about 4ms. The 99ms delay suggests the traffic is not taking a direct path.

The ACE cable runs along the coast from Bata northward to Lagos, but the actual routing may involve additional hops through Cameroon (Kribi or Douala) that are not visible in the traceroute because those routers do not respond to ICMP probes. Alternatively, GITGE may be routing traffic through Ceiba-2 to Cameroon and then along the NCSCS (Nigeria Cameroon Submarine Cable System) to Lagos — a longer path that would explain the high latency.

The even more interesting anomaly: the RTT from Bata to Lisbon (hop 3) is 106ms — almost identical to Bata to Lagos (107ms). This means the submarine cable transit from Lagos to Lisbon adds essentially zero additional latency. The ACE cable from Lagos to Portugal runs at near-theoretical-minimum speed — the distance is about 5,000 km, and at the speed of light in fiber (approximately 200,000 km/s), the one-way delay should be about 25ms. The 106ms RTT to Lisbon (53ms one-way) is consistent with the direct cable path plus some routing overhead.

What This Means

Equatorial Guinea's internet tells the story of digital inequality in miniature. A country with oil wealth and 1.7 million people has exactly one international submarine cable and two upstream providers. Its traffic to Australia — a journey that could theoretically be done in 180ms via the Indian Ocean — instead crosses three continents and eight American cities at 386ms.

The fundamental issue is not distance — it is the absence of direct peering. GITGE has no peering agreements with Asian or Oceanian networks. It hands traffic to Cogent in Lisbon or Hurricane Electric in Cape Town, and from there, the packet follows whatever path those carriers choose. For Cogent, that means westward to America. For Hurricane Electric, that means south to Cape Town then east via Europe.

The planned expansion of 2Africa — which will land in Nigeria and Gabon but not (yet) in Equatorial Guinea — could provide alternative routes via neighboring countries. But until GITGE secures direct access to more cables or more diverse peering, every packet from Bata to the Pacific will continue its 386ms odyssey through the American South.

Data based on 554 traceroute measurements from RIPE Atlas Probe 60163 in Bata, Equatorial Guinea, collected between March 6 and March 16, 2026.