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Prepared by: Les CottrellSLAC,Umar KalimSEECS,NUST/SLAC

IHY-Africa/SCINDA 2009, Livingstone, Zambia, 7-12 June 2009

www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/scs/net/talk09/ihyjun09.ppt

AfricanInternet Performance:

How bad is it; what can be done?

eGY

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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

Africa is Huge• Hard to get coverage (e.g. fibre) everywhere

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• India 10% area, but > population

…and diverse (e.g. languages)• Resources, religions,

geography …• More than 1,000 indigenous

African languages including several spoken by tens of millions such as Igbo, Swahili, Hausa, Amharic, and Yoruba;

• Plus Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Afrikaans, Spanish, Indian languages, others

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African World Status

• Internet city connections

Fibres

Light at night

CapacityFrom Telegeography

Sub-Saharan broadband costs off-scale

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www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/idi/2009/index.html

Source ITU

1 yr of Internet access > average annual income of most Africans,

Survey by Paul Budde Communications

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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

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PingER Methodology extremely Simple

Internet

10 ping request packets each 30 mins

RemoteHost(typicallya server)

Monitoring host

>ping remhost

Ping response packets

Measure Round Trip Time & Loss

Data Repository @ SLAC

On

ce a Day

Uses ubiquitous pingICTP

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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

– Monitors (>40 in 23 countries – 3 Africa)

– Beacons ~ 90– Remote sites (~740)

• >165 countries (98% world’s population, >99% world’s connected population)– >45 countries in Africa

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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

Loss

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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 IPTVhttp://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/tutorial.html#loss

Africa by far worst region,

10-20 times worse than developed regions

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World Throughput Trends Behind Europe5 Yrs: Russia, Latin America, Mid East 6 Yrs: SE Asia9 Yrs: South Asia12 Yrs: Cent. Asia16 Yrs: Africa

In 10 years at the current rate Africa will be 1000 times

worse than Europe

Derived throughput ~ 8 * 1460 /(RTT * sqrt(loss))Mathis et. al

1993

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Some Other World Views

Voice & video (de-jitter) Network & Host Fragility

Data TransferCapacity

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Mediterranean. & Africa vs HDI

• 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

HDI related to GDP, life expectancy, tertiary education etc.

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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

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

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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 installedalong roads, pylons etc. remain unused because of monopoly regulation!

Near Future: driven by World Cup in 2010

18http://www.internetworldstats.com/

What else is driving it

Huge growth

~ 3x lower penetration than any other regionhuge potential market

Many systemic factors:Electricity, import duties,skills, disease, protectionist policies, conflict, corruption.

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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.

Conclusions: There is Hope• 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

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“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”

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

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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

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Extra Slides

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Trends:Losses

• N. America, Europe, E. Asia, Oceania < 0.1%

• Underdeveloped 0.3- 2% loss, Africa worst.

• Mainly distance independent

• Big impact on performance, time outs etc.

• Losses > 2.5 % have big impact on interactivity, VoIP etc.

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• ~ 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

Trendlines for IPDV from SLAC to World Regions

N. America E. Asia

Europe

Australasia

S. Asia Africa

Russia

L. America SE Asia

C Asia

M East

Usual division into Developed vs Developing

Jitter

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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 SLACImprovements very clear, often due to move from satellite to land line.Similar results from CERN (less coverage)

Usab

le

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Leading African Countries

Country Population

[Sort] Int'l BW Mbps

Int'l BW / capita (bps)

Internet Users

Internet users/ 1000 capita

BW (bps)/ Internet User

DigitalOpportunityRank

Egypt 82,073,660.00 3784 46.105 1000000 12.1842 3784 90

South Africa 43,743,316.00 881.5 20.152 1012500 23.1464 870.617 91

Senegal 12,938,350.00 775 59.899 19351 1.49563 40049.6 112

Cameroon 18,569,348.00 155 8.3471 6500 0.35004 23846.2 137

Nigeria 139,070,856.00 150 1.0786 350000 2.5167 428.571 155

Kenya 38,213,024.00 113.39 2.9673 80000 2.09353 1417.38 164

Uganda 31,621,980.00 100 3.1624 8000 0.25299 12500 152

Burkina Faso 14,866,133.00 76 5.1123 14238 0.95775 5337.83 163

Cote d'Ivoire 18,465,326.00 55.42 3.0013 13747 0.74448 4031.43 144

Benin 8,349,959.00 47 5.6288 6396 0.76599 7348.34 147

Niger 13,364,797.00 30 2.2447 3117 0.23322 9624.64 179

Mozambique 21,379,584.00 18.5 0.8653 25000 1.16934 740 169

Ethiopia 78,697,922.00 10 0.1271 12155 0.15445 822.707 173

Namibia 2,067,433.00 9 4.3532 19000 9.19014 473.684 109

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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

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Throughput• Derive from:

Thru ~ 8 * 1460 _____________(RTT * sqrt(loss))

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African Situation

• 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

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

1 yr of Internet access > average annual income of most Africans, Survey by Paul Budde Communications

• 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

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)

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PingER Sites vs IHY sites

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Magnetometer

PingER sites

SID/GPS

• 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)