Provided is a Routing Early Warning System (“REWS”) that preemptively detects and corrects network issues based on control plane messaging. REWS receives control plane messages for network paths to a source node, groups the control plane messages to different bins based on time, detects an anomaly based on a number of a first set of control plane messages grouped to a particular bin differing, by a threshold amount, from a steady state number of control plane messages grouped to at least one other bin, and isolates a cause of the anomaly based on a number of updated paths and addressing of one or more nodes specified in the first set of control plane messages. REWS modifies routing of the source node data plane traffic before the anomaly significant impacts the data plane in response to detecting the anomaly and isolating the anomaly cause using the control plane messages.