Transcript Sub-Saharan Africa is a Dark Zone for World Internet: Sounding an Alarm Les CottrellSLAC, Aziz RehmatullahNIIT, Jerrod WilliamsSLAC, Akbar KhanNIIT Presented at the Sharing.

Sub-Saharan Africa is a Dark Zone for
World Internet: Sounding an Alarm
Les CottrellSLAC,
Aziz RehmatullahNIIT, Jerrod WilliamsSLAC, Akbar KhanNIIT
Presented at the Sharing Knowledge Across the Mediterranean,
ICTP, Trieste November 6-8, 2006
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/scs/net/talk06/sub-sahara-ictp-nov06.ppt
PingER
• PingER project originally (1995) for measuring
network performance for US, Europe and Japanese
HEP community
• 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/
• ~120 countries (99% world’s connected population)
• ~30 monitor sites in 14 countries
• Monitor ~30 African
countries (~25 subSahara), contain
~75% African
population
World Measurements: Min RTT from US
•
•
•
•
Maps show increased coverage
Min RTT indicates best possible, i.e. no queuing
>600ms 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
2006
Effect of Losses
• Losses critical, cause multi-second timeouts
• Typically depend on a bad link, so ~distance independent
• > 4-6% video-conf irritating, non-native language speakers unable to
communicate
• > 4-5% irritating for interactive telnet, X windows
• >2.5% VoIP annoying every 30 seconds or so
• Burst losses of > 1% slightly annoying for VoIP
• Loss by
country
weighted by
population of
country
• Note increased
coverage
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
SE Asia
C Asia
Oceania
L America
M East
Africa
Developing
Regions
S Asia
SE Europe
Russia
E Asia
US & Canada
Europe
• Africa, S.
Asia
followed by
M East & L.
America
worst off
Developed
Regions• Africa NOT
improving
World thruput seen from US
Throughput ~
1460Bytes /
(RTT*sqrt(loss))
(Mathis et al)
Behind Europe
6 Yrs: Russia,
Latin America
7 Yrs: Mid-East,
SE Asia
10 Yrs: South Asia
11 Yrs: Cent. Asia
12 Yrs: Africa
South Asia,
Central Asia, and
Africa are in
Danger of Falling
Even Farther
Behind
Many
systemic factors:
Electricity, import duties,
~ 3x lower penetration than any other region
skills, disease,
huge potential market
protectionist policies,
Huge growth
corruption.
915M people 14% world
population, 3.6% of world
internet users, mainly in
cities
Africa
http://www.internetworldstats.com/
Divide within Divide: Africa losses
seen from ICTP/SDU
•
•
•
•
Overall Loss performance is poor to bad
Factor of 10 difference between Nigeria and Zambia
N Africa best, E Africa worst
Big differences
within regions
• Poor coverage of
Central Africa
• In 2002, BW/capita
ranged from 0.02 to
over 40bps - a
factor of over 1000
Africa: Throughput
• Large diversity
• N Africa best
• E Africa much worse
Satellites vs Terrestrial
• Terrestrial links via SAT3 & SEAMEW (Mediterranean, Red Sea)
• Terrestrial not available to all within countries
Satellite $/Mbps
PingER min-RTT measurements from
300-1000x fibre costs
S. African TENET monitoring station
EASSy fibre for E. Africa
Will it share sorry experience of
SAT3 for W. Africa?
Mike Jensen,
Paul Hamilton
Fibre Links Future
• SAT3 connects eight countries on the W coast of the
continent to Europe and the Far East. Operating as a cartel
of monopoly state-owned telecommunication providers,
prices have barely come down since it began operating in
2002
– SAT-3 shareholders such as Telecom
Namibia, which has no landing point of
its own find it cheaper to use satellite
• Will EASSy follow suit?
• Another option to EASSy: since
Sudan and Egypt are now
connected via fibre, and the link will
shortly extend to Ethiopia, there are
good options for both Kenya and
Uganda/Rwanda and Tanzania to
quickly link to the backbones via
this route
Mike Jensen
Routing from S Africa
• Seen from TENET
Cape Town ZA
• Only Botswana &
Zimbabwe are
direct
• Most go via Europe
or USA
• Wastes costly
international
bandwidth
IXPs a Major Issue for African Internet
• International bandwidth prices are biggest contributor to high costs
• African users effectively subsidise international transit providers!
• Fibre optic links are few and expensive  reliance on satellite
connectivity
• High satellite latency  slow speed, high prices
• Growth of Internet businesses is inhibited
• In 2003 10 out of 53 countries had IXPs, now 16
• More IXPs  lower latency, lower costs, more usage
• Both national and regional IXPs needed
• Also needed: regional carriers, more fibre optic infrastructure
investment
Internet
•Américo Muchanga
[email protected],
•25 September 2005
IXP
A
B
But there are Obstacles
• Current providers (cable and satellite) have a lot to
loose
• Many of these have close links to regulators and
governments
• Regulatory regimes on the whole closed and
resistant to change
• Sometimes ISPs themselves are unwilling to cooperate
Costs compared to West
• Sites in many countries have bandwidth< US residence
– “10 Meg is Here”, www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=104415
• Africa: $5460/Mbps/m
– W Africa $8K/Mbps/m
– N Africa $520/Mbps/m
• Often cross-country
cost dominates cf.
international
1 yr of Internet access > average annual income of most Africans,
Survey by Paul Budde Communnications
Bandwidth Management
• For low bandwidth sites management is critical
– Block bandwidth wasting spam
– Provide web caching services and proxies
– Discover and block Denial of Service (DoS) attacks
– Optimize bandwidth use:
• compression, DNS caching, routing, backup routes/DNS, QoS
to prioritize important traffic, shaping
• Need skills & training
– E.g. ICTP Optimization Technologies for LowBandwidth Networks http://sdu.ictp.it/lowbandwidth/
Overall (Aug 06)
~ Sorted by Average throughput
Within region performance better (black ellipses)
Europe, N. America, E. Asia generally good
M. East, Oceania, S.E. Asia, L. America acceptable
C. Asia, S. Asia poor, Africa bad (>100 times worse)
Monitored Country
•
•
•
•
•
UNDP Human
Development
Index (HDI)
PingER thru
• Strong
Correlation
• Even
stronger for
TAI
• Non
subjective
• Quicker /
easier to
update
• A long and healthy life, as measured by life
expectancy at birth
• Knowledge, as measured by the adult literacy
rate (with two-thirds weight) and the combined
primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment
ratio (with one-third weight)
• A decent standard of living, as measured by
GDP per capita.
Med. & Africa vs HDI
• N. Africa has 10 times poorer performance than Europe
• Croatia has 13 times better performance than Albania
• Israel has 8 times better performance than rest of M East
Med. Countries
• 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
Scenario Cases
1. 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 dialup connection.
– Disconnects
2. Telecentre in a country with fairly good connectivity has no
connectivity
– The telecentre resorts to generating revenue from photocopies, PC training,
CD Roms for content
3. Primary health care giver, somewhere in Africa, with sonar machine,
digital camera and arrangement with national academic hospital
and/or international health institute to assist in diagnostics. After 10
dial-up attempts, she abandons attempts to connect.
4. The country’s banks are connected via
VSAT-based Private Telephone Network
(PTN, VPNs) with other branches in Africa
and with headquarters in Europe
Heloise Emdon, Acacia
– Makes real time transactions
Southern Africa
– Communication costs >20% of branch
overheads
UNDP Global Meeting for ICT for
Development, Ottawa 10-13 July
Conclusions
• Last mile problems, and network fragility
• Decreasing use of satellites, expensive, but still needed
for many remote countries in Africa and C. Asia
• Africa ~ 10 years behind and falling further behind,
leads to “information famine”
• E. Africa factor of 100 behind Europe
– EASSy project will bring fibre to E. Africa, hopefully better access than SAT3
• Africa big target of opportunity
– Growth in # users 2000-2005 200%, Africa 625%
– Need more competitive pricing
• Fibre competition, government divest for access, low cost VSAT
licenses
• Consortiums to aggregate & get better pricing ($/BW reduces with BW)
– Need better routing - IXPs
– Need training & skills for optimal bandwidth management
• Internet performance correlates strongly with UNDP
development indices
– Increase coverage of monitoring to understand Internet performance
More information
• Acknowledgements:
– Harvey Newman and ICFA/SCIC for a raison d’etre, ICTP for
contacts and education on Africa, Mike Jensen for Africa
information, NIIT/Pakistan, Maxim Grigoriev (FNAL), Warren
Matthews (GATech) for ongoing code development for PingER,
USAID MoST/Pakistan for development funding, SLAC for support
for ongoing management/operations support of PingER
• PingER
– www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger, sdu.ictp.it/pinger/africa.html
• Human Development
– http://www.gapminder.org/
• Role of Internet Exchanges
– event-africanetworking.web.cern.ch/event%2Dafrica%2Dnetworking/workshop/slides/The%
20Role%20of%20Internet%20Exchanges.ppt
• Case Studies:
– https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/SubSahara+Case+Study
– http://sdu.ictp.it/lowbandwidth/program/case-studies/index.html