Sub-Saharan Africa is a Dark Zone for World

Sub-Saharan Africa is a Dark Zone for World Internet: Sounding an Alarm Prepared by: Les Cottrell. SLAC, presented by Warren Matthews. GATech Presented at the “Supporting International Collaborations in Emerging Research and Education Networks” SIG at the Internet 2 Members Winter meeting, Chicago December 6, 2006 http: //www. slac. stanford. edu/grp/scs/net/talk 06/i 2 -dec 06. ppt

Ping. ER • Ping. ER 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 sub. Sahara), contain ~75% African population

World Measurements: Min RTT from US • • Maps show increased coverage Min RTT indicates best possible, i. e. no queuing >600 ms 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% Vo. IP annoying every 30 seconds or so • Burst losses of > 1% slightly annoying for Vo. IP • 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 • Africa, S. Asia followed by M East & L. America worst off Oceania L America M East Africa C Asia Developing Regions S Asia SE Europe Russia E Asia US & Canada Europe Developed Regions • Africa NOT improving

World thruput seen from US Throughput ~ 1460 Bytes / (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

Divide within Divide: Latin America Alberto Santoro Brazil

Africa: Satellites vs Terrestrial • Terrestrial links via SAT 3 & SEAMEW (Mediterranean, Red Sea) • Terrestrial not available to all within countries Satellite $/Mbps Ping. ER min-RTT measurements from 300 -1000 x fibre costs S. African TENET monitoring station EASSy fibre for E. Africa Will it share sorry experience of SAT 3 for W. Africa? TENET, S. Africa Mike Jensen, Paul Hamilton

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 • Need IXPs in Africa

Africa: Fibre Links Future • SAT 3 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

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 $8 K/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

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) Africa Ping. ER - Strong Correlation - 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 SAT 3 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 2/3 rds 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. Heloise Emdon, 3. Primary health care giver, somewhere in Acacia Southern Africa, with sonar machine, digital camera Africa and arrangement with national academic hospital and/or international health institute to UNDP Global Meeting for ICT for Development, Ottawa 10 -13 assist in diagnostics. After 10 dial-up July attempts, she abandons attempts to connect 4. Sep 05, international fibre to Pakistan fails for 12 days, satellite backup can only handle 25% traffic, call centres given priority. Research & Education sites cut off from Internet for 12 days

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 SAT 3 • 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/Questions • 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 Ping. ER, USAID Mo. ST/Pakistan for development funding, SLAC for support for ongoing management/operations support of Ping. ER • Ping. ER – 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%2 Dafrica%2 Dnetworking/workshop/slides/The% 20 Role%20 of%20 Internet%20 Exchanges. ppt • Case Studies: – https: //confluence. slac. stanford. edu/display/IEPM/Sub. Sahara+Case+Study – http: //sdu. ictp. it/lowbandwidth/program/case-studies/index. html