Quantifying the Global Digital Divide Warren Matthews and Les Cottrell (SLAC) Presented at the ESCC/Internet2 Techs Workshop. Lawrence, Kansas August 3-7, 2003.

What is the Digital Divide? Often cited Access to Computers Technical Education In this talk International networking and network performance for the developed vs developing countries.

The PingER Project (1/2) 36 monitoring sites in 14 countries Measures, analyzes & reports round-trip times, losses, availability, throughput ... Low impact on network << 100bits/s, important for many DD sites Covers 75+ countries 99% of Internet connected population

The PingER Project (2/2) Provide historical (> 8yrs) and near real-time quantitative information Aggregate by regions, affiliations etc. How bad is performance to various regions? Trends: who is catching up, falling behind? Compare vs. economic, financial indicators etc. Use for trouble shooting setting expectations, presenting to funding bodies

Deployment

100x improvement in 5 years North America Europe 5x Middle East Africa Russia 2x Note log scale Central Asia

Average Packet Loss Between Regions in July 2003 From To North America Europe Latin America Russia East Asia Australasia Middle East Africa Balkans Caucasus Baltics South Asia Central Asia North America (17) 0.4% (420) 0.4% (361) 1.9% (64) 1.37% (37) 1.1% (89) 0.7% (15) 1.4% (31) 11.5% (6) 0.5% (49) 1.9% (3) 0.8% (29) 2.87% (16) 5.6% (3) Europe (10) 0.4% (184) 0.3% (213) 1.2% (56) 2.0% (24) 1.0% (58) 0.8% (8) 1.1% (23) 18.6% (5) 0.5% (33) 0.7 (18) 1.8% (11) Latin America* (1) 0.6% (19) 0.2% (13) 1.4% (19) 1.7% (1) 3.9% (5) Russia (2) 1.3% (40) 1.6% (41) 2.4% (7) 0.1% (4) 1.5% (12) 2.7% (2) 1.4% (4) 16% (2) 1.0% (6) 2.5% (4) East Asia (2) 0.6% (40) 0.4% (38) 0.5% (4) 0.8% (14) 0.8% (4) 0.4% (6) 0.7% (4) Australasia (1) 0.2% (22) 0.2% (23) 1.0% (4) 0.5% (2) 0.9% (6) 0.4% (2)( 0.6% (2) 0.2% (3) Good Connectivity (packet loss <1%) Acceptable (<2%) * = Data from April 2003 Medium (<5%) Poor (<12%) Very poor (>12%) No data

Minimum Average Packet Loss Between Regions in July 2003 From To North America Europe Latin America Russia East Asia Australasia Middle East Africa Balkans Caucasus Baltics South Asia Central Asia North America (17) 0.0% (420) 0.0% (361) 0.0% (64) 0.0% (36) 0.0% (89( 0.3% (15) 0.0% (31) 1.2% (6) 0.0% (49) 0.2% (3) 0.1% (29) 0.5% (16) 1.6% (3) Europe (10) 0.0% (184) 0.0% (213) 0.0% (56) 0.1% (24) 0.0% (58) 0.1% (8) 0.0% (23) 1.6% (5) 0.0% (33) 0.1% (18) Latin America* (1) 0.1% (19) 0.1% (13) 0.1% (4) Russia (2) 0.1% (40) 0.2% (41) 0.3% (7) 0.0% (4) 0.1% (12) 1.6% (2) 0.4% (4) 0.4% (6) 0.7% (4) East Asia (2) 0.0% (40) 0.1% (38) 0.2% (6) 0.1% (14) 0.1% (6) Australasia (1) 0.1% (22) 0.1% (23) 0.2% (4) 0.1% (2) 0.3% (2) 0.4% (2) Minimum may be a better indication of what the connection is capable of. Good Connectivity (packet loss <1%) Acceptable (<2%) * = Data from April 2003 Medium (<5%) Poor (<12%) Very poor (>12%) No data

Turkey (1) Egypt (1) Iran (4) Jordon (1) Israel (1) Performance between SLAC and the University of Cairo improved dramatically in late May Recently added second node in Turkey has much lower packet loss Turkey (1) Egypt (1) Iran (4) Jordon (1) Israel (1)

SLAC to Middle East Sprintlink Teleglobe TCI Level 3 Flag Telecom RAYA Turkey Geant SLAC Israel Sprintlink Iran Teleglobe Jordan ESnet TCI Iran2 Level 3 Egypt Flag Telecom RAYA

NREN Core Network Size (Mbps-km) Abilene - 114,148,867 Mbps km 100M Nl Leading 10M Logarithmic Scale Fi Advanced Cz Hu Es 1M Ch In Transition It Pl Gr 100k Ir Lagging 10k Ro 1k Ukr 100 This slide taken from David Williams ICFA/SCIC talk on Serenate report. Data from the TERENA Compendeum.

NREN Core Network Size (Mbps-km) 2000 10M 2001 1M 100K 10K 1K 100

Loss Comparisons with Development (UNDP) Weak correlation with Human Development or GDP Even weaker with education & literacy

Network Readiness NRI from Center for International Development, Harvard U. http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cr/pdf/gitrr2002_ch02.pdf Improved correlation (0.23 => 0.46) by: Using derived throughput ~ MSS / (RTT * sqrt(loss)) Fit to exponential

Improving, but … Gap is widening Demanding Scientific applications are built to utilize very high performance network Grid Computing Interactive analysis Collaborators in developing countries will continue to miss out

Summary (1/2) Performance is improving all over Performance to developed countries are orders of magnitude better than to developing countries Poorer regions 5-10 years behind Poorest regions Africa, Caucasus, Central & S. Asia Some regions are catching up (e.g. Latin America, SE Europe), others (e.g. Africa) falling further behind

Summary (2/2) Bandwidth, Engineering Well organized National Research Network (NRN) Tuning Education and Training Funding

Funding Funding for PingER runs out this year Many agencies/organizations have expressed interest in this work but none can (or are allowed to) fund it. ICTP/eJDS are looking into EU money Also small grants to train remote collaborators

Recommendations of Trieste To devote resources to monitor in real time the connectivity of research and educational institutions in developing countries and to encourage (and devote resources to) the development of the connectivity.

Further Work Monitoring from ICTP More targets Other communities Monitor transitions to better networks Further Analysis Workshop in Trieste in November

Links This talk IEPM Home Page ITU eJDS ICFA SCIC Also see this months issue of Scientific American

Credits Enrique Canessa and Hilda Cerdeira David Williams Ken Flamm