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Internet Performance for Africa and the rest of the World

Internet Performance for Africa and the rest of the World. Prepared by: Les Cottrell SLAC , Umar Kalim SEECS,NUST/SLAC European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2009 session on African Cyberinfrastructures, Vienna, Austria 19-24 April 2009.

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Internet Performance for Africa and the rest of the World

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  1. Internet Performance for Africa and the rest of the World Prepared by: LesCottrellSLAC, Umar KalimSEECS,NUST/SLAC European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2009 session on African Cyberinfrastructures, Vienna, Austria 19-24 April 2009 www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/scs/net/talk09/vienna-apr09.ppt

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

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

  4. World Views(another perspective) Population Area Tertiary Education from http://www.worldmapper.org/ Internet Users 2002

  5. Possible Attractions Emerging Niche Mature Emerging Longterm Emerging Strategic • Large Population (~1 Billion) • Youthful population • Saturation of developed markets makes emerging markets interesting to business (Vital Wave) • Leapfrog technologies (cell phones, wireless …)

  6. Why Make Internet Measurements? • In the Information Age Information Technology (IT) is the major productivity and development driver (c.f. Industrial age’s roads, factories, materials) • 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 network computer • Internet enabled cell 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

  7. Methodology • Use PingER: • Arguably the world’s most extensive Active E2E Internet Monitoring project

  8. PingER Methodology is very simple 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 http://sdu.ictp.it • ICFA/SCIC: http://icfa-scic.web.cern.ch/ICFA-SCIC/ • >160 countries (98% world’s population, >99% world’s connected population) • 40 countries in Africa • Monitors (40 in 14 countries – 3 Africa) • Beacons ~ 90 • Remote sites (~700)

  10. World Measurements: Min RTT from US • Maps show increased coverage • Min RTT indicates best possible, i.e. no queuing • >400ms probably geo-stationary satellite • Between developed regions min-RTT dominated by distance - Little improvement possible • 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 Central Asia, and Africa are in Danger of Falling Even Farther behind 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. 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. Resort 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

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

  17. Opportunities: Fibre & Satellite & Mobiles • Satellite is extremely effective in reaching places where the volume of traffic would not justify a fibre connection. • GEOS satellite $/Mbps 300-1000 x Fibre, severely bandwidth-constrained and high latency • So fibre international and to major cities • then wireless (cell phone, wimax, LEOS…) • 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 • cell phone growth leads Internet growth (4yr gap) • ABUJA Africa's first communications satellite suffered an energy failure just 18 months after its launch - Nov. 2008 • Scramble to provide international fibre for World Cup 2010 17

  18. Opportunities: Business Many systemic factors:Electricity, import duties,skills, disease, wars, protectionist policies, corruption. ~ 3x lower penetration than any other region huge potential market Huge growth http://www.internetworldstats.com/

  19. There are Obstacles • Users (universities, countries) need to band together to leverage influence, get deals (NRENs, IXPs) • E.g. Ubuntunet, Bandwidth Initiative • 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) • Regulatory regimes need to be more open/transparent, less resistant to change, encourage competition • Yet Need standards, lack harmony between different country regulations makes international fibre deployment harder, multiple frequencies for cell phones increases costs • Sometimes ISPs themselves are unwilling to co-operate, may cut into business

  20. Conclusions • Poor performance affects information access, multi-media, VoIP, IT development & country performance / development • DD exists between regions, within regions, within countries, rural vs cities, age groups, poor vs rich… • Decreasing use of satellites, expensive, but still needed for many remote countries in Africa and C. Asia • Last mile problems (leap frog mobile phone replace fixed lines), and network fragility • International Exchange Points (IXPs) needed • Internet performance (non subjective, relatively easy/quick to measure) correlate strongly with economic/technical/development indices • Increase coverage of monitoring to understand Internet performance • Africa worst by all measures(throughput, loss, jitter, DOI, international bandwidth, users, costs …)and falling further behind.

  21. More Information • Thanks: • Incentive: ICFA/SCIC, Monique Petitdidier, ICTP, ITU • Funding: DoE/SLAC/HEP, Pakistan HEC/US State Dept • Effort: SLAC, NUSAT, ICTP (Trieste), FNAL, Georgia Tech, administrators at over 40 monitoring sites • PingER • www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger, sdu.ictp.it/pinger/africa.html • www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/icfa/icfa-net-paper-jan09/report-jan09.doc • Case Study: • confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Sub-Sahara+Case+Study • 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 • Global Information Society Watch 2008 • Need your help to improve African coverage, • contact cottrell@slac.stanford.edu

  22. Correlation with IHY Sites • PingER sites in green & blue • IHY sites (Magnetometer, GPS & AWESOME) in brown • Help answer questions of connectivity (data transfer / control) of remote sites

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