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/

• Monitor ~30 African countries (~25 sub-Sahara), contain ~75% African population

• ~120 countries (99% world’s connected population)• ~30 monitor sites in 14 countries

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

• Africa, S. Asia followed by M East & L. America worst off

• Africa NOT improving

US & CanadaEurope

E Asia

C Asia

SE Europe

SE Asia

S AsiaOceania

Africa

L America M East

Russia

DevelopedRegions

DevelopingRegions

World thruput seen from US

Behind Europe6 Yrs: Russia, Latin America 7 Yrs: Mid-East, SE Asia10 Yrs: South Asia11 Yrs: Cent. Asia12 Yrs: Africa

South Asia, Central Asia, and

Africa are in Danger of Falling

Even Farther Behind

Throughput ~1460Bytes /(RTT*sqrt(loss))(Mathis et al)

http://www.internetworldstats.com/

Huge growth

~ 3x lower penetration than any other regionhuge potential market

Many systemic factors:Electricity, import duties,skills, disease, protectionist policies, corruption.915M people 14% world population, 3.6% of world internet users, mainly in cities

Africa

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

PingER min-RTT measurements fromS. African TENET monitoring station

EASSy fibre for E. AfricaWill it share sorry experience of SAT3 for W. Africa?

Mike Jensen,Paul HamiltonTENET, S. Africa

Satellite $/Mbps 300-1000x fibre costs

Fibre Links Future

– 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

• 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

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

InternetInternet

AA BBIXP•Américo Muchanga

americo@uem.mz, •25 September 2005

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 co-operate

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 Low-

Bandwidth 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)

Mo

nit

ore

d C

ou

ntr

y

UNDP Human Development Index (HDI)

• 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. PingER thru

• Strong Correlation

• Even stronger for TAI

• Non subjective

• Quicker / easier to update

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 Cases1. 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

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.

Heloise Emdon, Acacia Southern Africa

UNDP Global Meeting for ICT for Development, Ottawa 10-13 July

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– Makes real time transactions– Communication costs >20% of branch

overheads

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-africa-networking.web.cern.ch/event%2Dafrica%2Dnetworking/

workshop/slides/The%20Role%20of%20Internet%20Exchanges.ppt • Case Studies:

– https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Sub-Sahara+Case+Study

– http://sdu.ictp.it/lowbandwidth/program/case-studies/index.html