Project "E21" is conclusively Ethiopia: names IGW sites by city -- MWV-IGW, BOLE-IGW (Bole, the Addis Ababa airport district), Shashamane-IGW, Bahir Dar-IGW, Dire Dawa-IGW, Legehar -- each with a distinct IP block, indicating a national multi-city topology.
MWV-IGW 10.227.11.1 BOLE-IGW:10.225.11.1 Shashamane-IGW:10.226.11.1 Bahir Dar-IGW:10.228.11.1 Dire Dawa-IGW:10.219.11.1 Legehar:10.230.11.1
Defense implications
- Upgrades E21=Ethiopia from inferential to a named, multi-site national topology across several major population centers, not just the capital.
Related findings
Ethiopia (E21) customer specifically tested Melon VPN and Ultrasurf against TSG; Ultrasurf's frequently-rotating IPs required an updated signature (successfully blocked after update), while Melon VPN's connection succeeded but was non-functional for other reasons (not attributed to TSG blocking).
Confirms the full licensed TSG component roster deployed at Ethiopia (E21): Firewall, Digital Observer, Email Retention, Statistics Policy, Proxy, Session Record, GTP Security, AppSketch, AppSketch Engine, AppSketch DB, WebSketch, WebSketch DB. Several license terms were extended to expire 2091-12-31, indicating a multi-decade commercial commitment.
Side-by-side internal performance comparison across Xinjiang (China Mobile carrier deployment, hostname cmcc-xj-server1-sapp-244), Fujian (domestic), and Ethiopia (E21) explicitly references the same 'app_sketch_maat' diagnostic log format at all three sites, confirming the identical AppSketch app-fingerprinting stack is used for domestic Xinjiang surveillance and for the exported Ethiopia deployment.
Direct dated evidence (July 2023) that the Ethiopia (E21) customer actively toggles application-level blocking as a live policy lever: lifting the block on YouTube plus four other apps caused a documented traffic surge and device alerts at the BOL-IGW site.
A certificate-issuance repo (luwenpeng/certificate, commit "TSG-8365 为TSG/Nezha界面的服务端签发证书" = "issue server-side certs for the TSG/Nezha interface") contains config, CSR, key, and crt files explicitly named "-for-e21" (ca-root-for-e21.conf, tsg-entity-for-e21.crt, nezha-entity-for-e21.key), confirming an internally-issued PKI hierarchy used for encrypted communication between TSG and its "Nezha" management-web-interface components at a site tagged E21 (Ethiopia).
A TSG "device_group" tag configuration enumerates 30+ Ethiopian deployment sites far beyond the previously-known E21 site list, including many new city/PE (provider-edge) codes (Ambo, Nekemte, Yeka, Arada, Jijiga, Dessie, Mekele, Debre Markos, Gondar, Hawasa, Sodo, Jimma, plus GGSN nodes at Microwave/Kirkos/Nefas Silk) alongside the already-documented sites (Bole, Shashamane, Bahir Dar, Dire Dawa, Legehar, Old Airport, Nefas Silk). Two entries are explicitly labeled "Safaricom Kaliti IGW" (KLT-IGW) and "Safaricom STEP HQ IGW" (STQ-IGW), directly confirming the Safaricom Ethiopia customer identity for the E21 deployment from primary device configuration rather than inference.