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African Internet Performance: How bad is it; what can be done?

eGY. African Internet Performance: How bad is it; what can be done?. Prepared by: Les Cottrell SLAC , Umar Kalim SEECS,NUST/SLAC IHY-Africa/SCINDA 2009, Livingstone, Zambia, 7-12 June 2009. www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/scs/net/talk09/ihyjun09.ppt. Summary. African Infrastructure

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African Internet Performance: How bad is it; what can be done?

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  1. eGY AfricanInternet Performance: How bad is it; what can be done? Prepared by: LesCottrellSLAC, Umar KalimSEECS,NUST/SLAC IHY-Africa/SCINDA 2009, Livingstone, Zambia, 7-12 June 2009 www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/scs/net/talk09/ihyjun09.ppt

  2. Summary • African Infrastructure • Methodology of measuring Internet performance • Overall world Internet performance & where does Africa stand • Africa directions • Wireless/fibre, Routing, Costs, Difficulties, • Conclusions & further information

  3. Africa is Huge • Hard to get coverage (e.g. fibre) everywhere • India 10% area, but > population

  4. …and diverse (e.g. languages) • Resources, religions, geography … • More than 1,000 indigenous African languagesincluding several spoken by tens of millions such as Igbo, Swahili, Hausa, Amharic, and Yoruba; • Plus Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Afrikaans, Spanish, Indian languages, others

  5. African World Status Fibres Light at night • Internet city connections Capacity From Telegeography

  6. Sub-Saharan broadband costs off-scale Source ITU • www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/idi/2009/index.html 1 yr of Internet access > average annual income of most Africans, Survey by Paul Budde Communications

  7. Why Make Internet Measurements? • In the Information Age Information Technology (IT) is the major productivity and development driver., particularly science & education • Travel & the Internet have made a global viewpoint critical • One Laptop Per Child (“$100” computer) • New thin client paradigm, servers do work, requires networking (Google: “Negroponte $100 computer”), driving Intel & AMD cheap net-books, • Internet enabled Smart phones (e.g. iPhone) • Enables “Internet Kiosk & Cafe” can make big difference • So we need to understand and set expectations on the accessibility, performance, costs etc. of the Internet

  8. PingER Methodology extremely Simple ICTP Uses ubiquitous ping >ping remhost Remote Host (typically a server) Monitoring host Internet 10 ping request packets each 30 mins Once a Day Ping response packets Data Repository @ SLAC Measure Round Trip Time & Loss

  9. PingER Deployment • PingER project originally (1995) for measuring network performance for US, Europe and Japanese HEP community - now mainly R&E sites • Extended this century to measure Digital Divide: • Collaboration with ICTP Science Dissemination Unit • ICFA/SCIC • Most extensive E2E Active Internet Measurement • >165 countries (98% world’s population, >99% world’s connected population) • >45 countries in Africa • Monitors (>40 in 23 countries – 3 Africa) • Beacons ~ 90 • Remote sites (~740)

  10. World Measurements: Min RTT from US • Min RTT indicates best possible, i.e. no queuing • >400ms probably geo-stationary satellite (red & magenta) • Maps show increased coverage by fibre (less GEOS) • Only a few places still using satellite for international access, mainly Africa & Central Asia 2000 2008

  11. Loss With TCP (>80% Internet traffic) recovery from loss can take several seconds, such delays make interactive use annoying to impossible. For non TCP multi-media traffic loss causes poor voice/video (VoIP/H323) above 1.5%,loss > 0.5% unacceptable for IPTV http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/tutorial.html#loss • Africa by far worst region, • 10-20 times worse than developed regions

  12. World Throughput Trends Derived throughput ~ 8 * 1460 /(RTT * sqrt(loss)) Mathis et. al Behind Europe 5 Yrs: Russia, Latin America, Mid East 6 Yrs: SE Asia 9 Yrs: South Asia 12 Yrs: Cent. Asia 16 Yrs: Africa In 10 years at the current rate Africa will be 1000 times worse than Europe 1993

  13. Some Other World Views Data Transfer Capacity Voice & video (de-jitter) Network & Host Fragility

  14. Mediterranean. & Africa vs HDI HDI related to GDP, life expectancy, tertiary education etc. • There is a good correlation between the 2 measures • N. Africa has 10 times poorer performance than Europe • N. Africa several times better than say E. Africa • E. Africa poor, limited by satellite access • W. Africa big differences, some (Senegal) can afford SAT3 fibre others use satellite • Great diversity between & within regions

  15. Opportunities: Routing • Seen from TENET Cape Town ZA • Only Botswana & Zimbabwe are direct • Most go via Europe or USA • Wastes costly international bandwidth, subsidizes international carriers • Need IXPs in Africa

  16. Opportunities: Fibre, satellite, mobiles • Satellite is extremely effective in reaching places where the volume of traffic would not justify a fibre connection. • But GEOS satellite $/Mbps 300-1000 x Fibre, severely bandwidth-constrained and high latency • So fibre international and to major cities • Scramble to provide international fibre for World Cup 2010 • then wireless (cell phone, wimax, …) • cell phone growth leads Internet growth by 4.5 years • 16 LEOS (reduce latency) - Sep 2008 • Google signed up with Liberty Global and HSBC in a bid to launch 16 LEOS satellites, to bring high-speed internet access to Africa by end 2010 • ABUJA Africa's first communications satellite suffered an energy failure just 18 months after its launch - reported Nov. 2008 16

  17. African International Fibres 2010 Current: SAT-3-WASC run by a consortium of state monopolies that has opted for elite rather than mass market. Prices tend to align to satellite in the absence of competition! “Black” Fibres installed along roads, pylons etc. remain unused because of monopoly regulation! Near Future: driven by World Cup in 2010

  18. What else is driving it Many systemic factors:Electricity, import duties,skills, disease, protectionist policies, conflict, corruption. ~ 3x lower penetration than any other region huge potential market Huge growth http://www.internetworldstats.com/

  19. Conclusions: The bad • Poor performance affects data transfer, multi-media, VoIP, IT development & country performance / development • DD exists between regions & countries, rural vs cities, poor vs rich, old vs young… • Decreasing use of satellites, expensive, but still needed for many remote countries in Africa and C. Asia • Last mile problems, and network fragility • Current providers (cable and satellite) have a lot to loose • Many of these have close links to regulators and governments (e.g. over 50% of ISPs in Africa are government controlled) • Africa worst by all measures(throughput, loss, jitter, DOI, international bandwidth, users, costs …)and falling further behind.

  20. Conclusions: There is Hope “The way we develop here in Africa will be different from the way the big nations developed. They grew up with computers. We are growing up with mobile phones.- Fritz Ekwoge” • World cup: international fibre access + competition • LEOS • Leapfrog last mile fixed wire with wireless • Cheaper end points: OLTP, netbook, smart-phones • Banding together of universities => leverage influence & get deals => NRENs => IXPsUsers • E.g. Ubuntunet, Bandwidth Initiative • Standards: • Harmonization of regulations country to country • Cheaper cell phone, can’t afford multiple technologies & frequencies • Regulatory regimes becoming: • more open/transparent, less resistant to change

  21. Conclusions: PingER • Quantitatively Measures Internet performance • non subjective, • relatively easy/quick to measure (c.f. ITU etc methods) • So monthly, daily updates • correlates strongly with economic/technical/development indices • Increase coverage of monitoring to understand Internet performance • Lots of granularity: • within countries, monthly, daily • Gives baselines, trends, effect of improvements • Relative comparisons countries, regions, sites • Good coverage for Africa • Need: Chad, Comoros, Eq. Guinea, Sao Tome, Somalia

  22. More Information • Thanks: • Incentive: ICFA/SCIC, Monique Petitdidier, ICTP, ITU • Funding: DoE/SLAC/HEP, Pakistan HEC • Effort: SLAC, NUST, ICTP (Trieste), FNAL, Georgia Tech, administrators at over 40 monitoring sites in 23 countries • ITU/WIS Report 2006 & 2007 (or Google: “WSIS Report 2007”) • www.itu.int/osg/spu/publications/worldinformationsociety/2007/report.html • www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/idi/2009/index.html • Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa • www.arp.harvard.edu/AfricaHigherEducation/Online.html • PingER • www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger, sdu.ictp.it/pinger/africa.html • www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/icfa/icfa-net-paper-jan09/ • Global Information watch: www.giswatch.org • Need network contacts in Africa: cottrell@slac.stanford.edu

  23. Extra Slides

  24. Trends:Losses • Mainly distance independent • Big impact on performance, time outs etc. • Losses > 2.5 % have big impact on interactivity, VoIP etc. • N. America, Europe, E. Asia, Oceania < 0.1% • Underdeveloped 0.3- 2% loss, Africa worst.

  25. Jitter • ~ Distance independent • Calculated as Inter Packet Delay Variation (IPDV) • IPDV = Dri = Ri – Ri-1 • Measures congestion • Little impact on web, email • Decides length of VoIP codec buffers, impacts streaming • Impacts (with RTT and loss) the quality of VoIP Usual division into Developed vs Developing Trendlines for IPDV from SLAC to World Regions C Asia Russia S. Asia Africa SE Asia L. America M East Australasia Europe N. America E. Asia

  26. VoIP & MOS • Telecom uses Mean Opinion Score (MOS) for quality • 1=bad, 2=poor, 3=fair, 4=good, 5=excellent • With VoIP codecs best can get is 4.2 to 4.4 • Typical usable range 3.5 to 4.2 • Calc. MOS from PingER: RTT, Loss, Jitter (www.nessoft.com/kb/50) • Africa & C. Asia not possible, S. Asia with patience OK MOS of Various Regions from SLAC Improvements very clear, often due to move from satellite to land line. Similar results from CERN (less coverage) Usable

  27. Leading African Countries

  28. Unreachability • All pings of a set fail ≡unreachable • Shows fragility, ~ distance independent • Developed regions US, Canada, Europe, Oceania, E Asia lead • Factor of 10 improvement in 8 years • Africa, S. Asia followed by M East & L. America worst off • Africa NOT improving SE Asia L America M East C Asia Oceania S Asia SE Europe Russia Developing Regions Africa E Asia Developed Regions US & Canada Europe

  29. Throughput • Derive from: Thru ~ 8 * 1460 _____________ (RTT * sqrt(loss))

  30. African Situation 1 yr of Internet access > average annual income of most Africans, Survey by Paul Budde Communications • Access to the internet is so desirable to students in Africa that they spend considerable time and money to get it. Many students surveyed, with no internet connection at their universities, resorted to private, fee-charging internet cafes to study and learn. www.arp.harvard.edu/AfricaHigherEducation/Online.html • Survey (IHY meeting Ethiopia in November ’07) of leading Universities in 17 countries (will repeat with more clarity): • Each had tens of 1000’s of students, 1000 or so staff • Best had 2 Mbits, worst dial up 56kbps • Often access restricted to faculty Internet Café in Ghana • School in a secondary town in an East Coast country with networked computer lab spends 2/3rds of its annual budget to pay for the dial-up connection. • Disconnects Heloise Emdon, Acacia Southern Africa

  31. PingER: African coverage • Host monitored in 50 of ~60 countries (98.7% pop) • 131 hosts monitored in Africa • Cannot find hosts in Chad, Comoros, Eq. Guinea, Sao Tome, Somalia • Yellow only 1 host (so could be anomalous, e.g. Libya) • Need help for contacts: (cottrell@slac.stanford.edu)

  32. PingER Sites vs IHY sites • IHY sites with good Internet access nearby may be able to use it to transfer data or even control • IHY Coordinates from Monique Petitdidier (CNRS), Deborah Scherrer (Stanford), Barbara Thompson (NASA) PingER sites Magnetometer SID/GPS

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