CAPIF 5: Regional Interconnectivity in Central Asia

Central Asia’s Internet looks very different than it did back at CAPIF 1. We trace the rise of direct regional routes, stronger routing security and new connectivity options - along with the gaps that remain.

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When the Central Asian Internet community gathered for CAPIF 1 in 2022, much of the region’s connectivity still reflected an older pattern of limited direct links between neighbouring countries and a heavy reliance on routes through Russia. That’s not the picture we see today.

Across Central Asia, operators and governments have been diversifying routes, growing IXPs, and strengthening routing security. Not only is the number of direct connections between regional networks on the rise, but links towards Pakistan, China, Azerbaijan and Europe are providing new alternatives to traditional paths. All in all, this is a region busy building a more independent and resilient footing between Europe and Asia.

The change isn’t always even. Kazakhstan has seen a dramatic jump in IPv4 ROA coverage, Uzbekistan is becoming a more important regional hub, and Tajikistan has made gains across several indicators. IPv6 adoption, however, remains stubbornly low across much of the region. That said, evidence of good progress overall can be seen in the paths the traffic is actually taking. In this report, we’ll show how RIPE Atlas measurements carried out in 2022, 2024 and 2026 suggest more direct routes within Central Asia, fewer long detours outside the region, and a reduced - though still significant - reliance on Russia.

First, to get a sense of what happened since our last report ahead of CAPIF 4, we’ll take a quick look at how each of the five Central Asian countries has developed this past year. We’ll then step back and look at the region as a whole to see how the connections between these countries are changing, what the measurements tell us about new regional routes, and where further gains are still to be made.

If you are from Central Asia or interested in the region, join us at the CAPIF 5 meeting that will take place on 24-25 September in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Technology adoption - country profiles

Since CAPIF 1, we've seen significant and sometimes quite striking developments in terms of Internet technology adoption. As we see, the clearest gains have come in the form of routing security, while IPv6 adoption has moved much more slowly. All in all though, it’s very promising to see so much movement in the right direction.

Zooming in on the past year, the Central Asian countries have followed different trajectories in Internet resource growth and technology adoption. In places, we see striking gains, while in others, progress is more mixed. Here’s a snapshot of where each country stands now compared to then.

* Change in IPv6 in the above plot is measured in terms of IPv6 capability, which indicates the readiness of networks to use IPv6 (and so differs from other adoption metrics). To read more about how and why we measure RPKI and IPv6 adoption, check out our previous regional reports.

Kazakhstan, the largest holder of IPv4 address space in the region, has seen a particularly sharp increase in terms of ROA coverage, which went from around 13% in September 2025 to nearly 80% in September 2026.

This is mainly a result of Kazakhtelecom creating ROAs for its IPv4 address space. As for ROV deployment, there seems to have been little change, although some early progress has been made in ASPA adoption.

Kazakhstan also continues to lead the other four Central Asian countries in IPv6 adoption, even if the numbers have not risen dramatically since CAPIF 4.

Kyrgyzstan has seen relatively little movement in technology adoption over the past year. While there have been some changes across individual indicators, there is no single shift on the scale seen in Kazakhstan.

One notable development comes from ROV. Uzbektelecom is now among the five most central ASNs in Kyrgyzstan’s routing, and has also started implementing ROV. That matters beyond Uzbekistan itself, strengthening routing security for networks that rely on it, including in Kyrgyzstan.

To measure the “centrality” of a network, we employ AS hegemony methodology. Check out this interactive visualisation to see hegemony and ROV deployment for networks across Central Asian countries.

Tajikistan has seen encouraging progress across several technology indicators over the past year. ROA coverage has increased, including a particularly strong rise for government resources, while ASPA adoption has also begun to grow. IPv6 capability has improved too, although actual adoption remains low.

Turkmenistan has by far the smallest Internet resource footprint of the five countries, with just seven ASNs and 87 /24s of allocated IPv4 space. Technology adoption has changed little over the past year: ROA coverage remains very high, while ASPA and actual IPv6 adoption remain at zero.

Uzbekistan’s Internet resource base has grown strongly since 2025, with 40 additional ASNs and 80 more /24s of allocated IPv4 space. On the other hand, technology adoption has moved more gradually, with only modest gains in ROA and ASPA coverage.

The standout development is in ROV. Uzbektelecom - or its upstream provider - has started deploying ROV, and as we see from the plot on the right, this is significant. Uzbektelecom is the largest and one of the most central networks in the country’s routing landscape.

At the same time, Uzbekistan appears to be diversifying its connections beyond the region. One example is a southern route via Pakistan Telecom (AS17557), providing access towards international submarine cable capacity including SEA-ME-WE and AAE. We’ll return to this kind of network diversification below.

As in other CAPIF reports, we continue to note developments in Iran as a close neighbour and useful comparison case for the Internet in Central Asia. This year, routing security remains strong with IPv4 ROA coverage at 97%, and ASPA is showing good early signs of growth.

The past year has also seen major disruption to Internet connectivity in Iran. IPv6 capability fell sharply following the nationwide Internet shutdown in January, followed by a second prolonged shutdown that began in late February. While some IPv6 measurements have since recovered, capability remains well below its previous level.

Regional interconnectivity

To see what paths are available between countries in Central Asia, we turn to RIPE Atlas traceroute measurements. The analysis we’ll employ here was initially conducted for CAPIF 1 in 2022, then again at CAPIF 3 in 2024, and the measurements have now been updated for 2026. This gives us a view of how regional interconnectivity has developed over time.

For a more in-depth discussion of our analysis, follow Alex Semenyaka's presentation at CAPIF 5 on 24 September.

The broad picture is encouraging. There are more intra-regional routes, while reliance on routes through Russia has decreased. But paths between neighbouring countries can still take long detours outside the region, and the picture varies considerably depending on which countries we look at.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are among the strongest examples of growing regional interconnectivity. In the 2026 measurements, a significant proportion of paths between the two countries takes direct routes. Some paths still go via Russia, although on a much smaller scale than in earlier measurements, while others pass through countries in Central and Northern Europe.

Note that “??” refers to the hops that couldn’t be geolocated.

Changes in the routes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - as shown below - are also worth noting, having emerged alongside a strengthening of political and economic ties between the two countries, including the breakthrough border agreements reached in 2025.

Compared to what we saw in 2022 - at which point most of the measured traceroutes never reached their destination - we now see a significant number of direct routes, as well as shorter routes through other countries in the region (primarily Uzbekistan). Reliance on routes through Russia has also fallen considerably. In 2024, we also saw new routes out of the region appear, including through Pakistan. That remains an important exit from the region in 2026, although it is now encountered less frequently.

Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan exhibit another of the clearly positive changes to have emerged since CAPIF 1. In 2022, paths between these two countries were still getting caught up in multiple loops (which show up in our diagrams when the origin country of a path appears later in the same path), involving passage through Russia and other countries outside the region. By 2026, we see more direct routes between the two countries, with significantly lower delays.

More ways to connect

The measurements above indicate that more traffic is taking direct or intra-regional paths than it did a few years ago. This uptake in diversity depends on all kinds of related changes, such as networks peering more directly, new IXPs providing more places to interconnect, and new physical links opening up additional paths into and out of Central Asia.

As a peering and interconnection forum, CAPIF was always meant to foster better peering in the region, and alongside these events, we’ve seen a growing number of IXPs being established across the region, with governments often playing an active role. Indeed, as of September 2026, PeeringDB lists 22 IXPs across the five countries, 15 of them in Kazakhstan. Many of those are part of Kaz GOV-IX, operated in different parts of the country by the State Technical Service.

There is still plenty of room to improve the peering environment, but a wider spread of exchange points gives networks more opportunities to establish the local and regional connections that can help keep traffic on shorter paths.

One of the more recent developments is the completion of a key stage of the Trans-Caspian submarine cable project in Kazakhstan. The cable, running between Aktau and Sumgait, is intended to connect the digital infrastructure of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan directly. The project is designed to provide an alternative data transmission route and improve the resilience of Eurasian digital transit, adding to an estimated 40,000 kilometres of operational fibre in Kazakhstan.

The networks behind the routes

We’ve examined the data plane with RIPE Atlas to see what paths are actually observed in traceroute measurements. Now we turn to the control plane, using routing data from RIPE RIS to get a clearer view of which networks sit behind those paths, which operators provide international transit, and where connections are becoming more diverse. What we see is that, while cross-border connectivity has improved, it still depends on a relatively small number of large operators.

Kazakhstan is a good example of a country with a good degree of diversity in its cross-border connections. Russia remains the main transit country, but we also see a wider range of connections towards Europe. To visualise this, we once again employ Sankey diagrams to show how routes from Kazakhstan leave the country to hop to foreign networks as seen by RIPE RIS collectors.

Cross-border connectivity in Kazakhstan is regulated and centralised, so the relatively small number of Kazakh networks appearing at the international border is expected. Kazakhtelecom, the dominant fixed-network and major backbone operator, nevertheless provides substantial external route diversity, including redundancy required by regulation. The picture also reflects some movement in which networks are most influential. TNS Plus and Kazakhtelecom continue to have the highest AS Hegemony scores in Kazakhstan, while Rostelecom, which was among the five most central ASes in 2025, now has a lower level of centrality.

Kyrgyzstan has traditionally looked somewhat different from the other countries in the region. Private operators such as Elcat, Megaline and IPnet have played an important role in providing international connectivity, rather than this being concentrated primarily in a national incumbent. More recently, however, the government nationalised Elcat and introduced what was described as a ‘temporary’ monopoly on the supply and provision of international Internet traffic.

At the same time, we see increasing diversity in Kyrgyzstan’s external connections. Uzbekistan’s Uzbektelecom and Kazakhstan’s TNS Global (TNS Plus) are among the country’s main upstream providers - a positive sign of stronger regional interconnection. TNS Global has recently launched the new southern telecommunications route connecting Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries towards the UAE.

Uzbektelecom is also now among the five most central ASNs in Kyrgyzstan’s routing. As we saw earlier, its move towards ROV therefore matters beyond Uzbekistan itself, strengthening routing security for networks in neighbouring countries that depend on it.

Finally, Tajikistan provides one more good example of how the region’s interconnection patterns are changing. Historically, Russia served as the main regional connectivity hub for Central Asia, leaving relatively little incentive to establish direct links between neighbouring networks because so much traffic was routed via Moscow. As latency requirements have become more demanding and latency-sensitive applications more common, the value of direct regional interconnection has increased. That transition is happening gradually: a significant share of the paths we observe still passes through Russia, but regional networks are becoming more important.

One of the clearest signs of this change is the growing role of Uzbektelecom, which now plays a more significant part in Tajikistan’s interconnection landscape than it did last year.

Turkmenistan presents a rather different picture. Its international connectivity remains highly concentrated around Turkmentelecom, which makes the country more dependent on a single operator. Regional networks including Azerbaijan’s Delta and Uzbektelecom also appear as transit providers, while Rostelecom now has a lower hegemony score than it did at CAPIF 4.

Taken together, what we see in the routing data reinforces the conclusions drawn from the RIPE Atlas measurements. Russia remains an important part of Central Asia’s connectivity, but the regional picture is becoming more varied, with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in particular playing increasingly important roles in carrying traffic within and beyond the region - including, as we saw earlier, through Uzbekistan’s developing links towards Pakistan.

Conclusions

Four years on from the first CAPIF, the direction of change in Central Asia is clear. There are more direct or intra-regional routes, networks have more options for connecting within and beyond the region, and historic reliance on paths through Russia is gradually decreasing, with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan increasingly taking on the role of regional connectors. In addition to that, we’ve seen that:

Regional interconnectivity is continuing to improve. Our measurements show more direct and intra-regional paths than we saw in 2022, while new IXPs and physical links are giving networks more options for how they connect.
Routing security has made some of the strongest gains. Kazakhstan’s dramatic increase in IPv4 ROA coverage stands out, while ROV deployment by Uzbektelecom is particularly significant given the network’s central role both within Uzbekistan and for neighbouring networks.
Greater diversity does not automatically mean greater resilience. In several countries, connectivity still depends heavily on a relatively small number of operators. Turkmenistan provides the clearest example, with Turkmentelecom playing a dominant role in international connectivity.
IPv6 remains the clearest area where progress is lagging. Capability has improved in places, but actual adoption remains very low across much of the region and has changed little in several countries over the past year.

The overall conclusion here is a positive one. The region’s Internet is moving in the right direction. And yet there’s clearly more work to do. Since CAPIF began, the RIPE NCC has continued working with operators and telecommunications authorities across all five countries through training, Internet measurement activities and support for RPKI and IPv6 deployment. The changes we can now measure give us plenty to build on, and plenty to come back and measure again as the region continues to develop.