Quantifying the need for Improved Network Performance for S. Asia Prepared by: Les Cottrell SLAC & Shahryar Khan NIIT For the Internet2 Special Interest Group on Emerging NRENs Planning Meeting: Enhancing Research and Education Connectivity to and within South Asia April 26,

How do we Measure Network Performance?

PingER Methodology Internet 10 ping request packets each 30 mins Remote Host (typically a server) Monitoring host > ping remhost Ping response packets Measure Round Trip Time & Loss Data SLAC Once a Day Uses ubiquitous ping

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: Monitor 44 sites in S. Asia Most extensive active E2E monitoring in world >120 countries (99% world’s connected population) >35 monitor sites in 14 countries

Where does S. Asia fit Compared to Rest of World

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

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 & Canada Europe E Asia C Asia SE Europe SE Asia S Asia Oceania Africa L AmericaM East Russia Developed Regions Developing Regions

Losses N. America, Europe, E. Asia, Oceania < 0.1% Underdeveloped % loss, Africa worst. Mainly distance independent Big impact on performance, time outs etc. Losses > 2.5 % have big impact on interactivity, VoIP etc.

~ Distance independent Calculated as Inter Packet Delay Variation (IPDV) –IPDV = Dr i = R i – R i-1 Measures congestion Little impact on web, 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

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 ( MOS of Various Regions from SLAC Improvements very clear, often due to move from satellite to land line. Similar results from CERN (less coverage) Usable

World thruput seen from US 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 Throughput ~ 1460Bytes / (RTT*sqrt(loss)) (Mathis et al)

Normalized for Details Note step changes Africa v. poor S. Asia improving N. America, Europe, E Asia, Oceania lead

“Development” Indices There are many “development” indices today (values 0-1), e.g.: –UNDP Human Development Index (2006, 177 countries) –UNDP Technology Achievement Index (2001, 72 countries) –ITU Digital Access Index (2003) and the Digital Opportunity Index (2006), both 180 countries –World Economic Forum’s Network Readiness Index (2004, 2005, : 122 countries) –Harvard University Network Readiness Index (2002, 75 countries) … Typically subset of: GDP/capita, knowledge ( e.g. tertiary education enrollment ), life expectancy, network ( hosts/capita, access, policy, usage, affordability, users/capita ); technology ( patents, royalties, exports, phones/capita, electricity) The size of the Internet infrastructure is a good indication of a country's progress towards an information-based economy. Indices are hard to gather, agree on, many countries do not report Most Internet traffic in a developing country is international (75-90%) We measure international Internet performance which is an interesting (good?) indicator.

Digital Access Index (DAI) Most European countries > 1500 Kb/s throughput and greater than 0.6 DAI. Exceptions: –Malta, Belarus and Ukraine. –Balkans is catching up with Europe, exception Albania is way down. E. Asia apart from China clusters M East: Israel & Cyrus close to Europe, Iran way down SE Asia 3 cluster: Singapore at top, Malaysia and Brunei middle, Vietnam & Indonesia at bottom S. Asia 2 clusters: –India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka –Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal Africa at bottom Correlation strong infrastructure, affordability, knowledge and quality and actual usage of ICTs

Focus on S. Asia

S. Asia Coverage Monitor 44 hosts in region. 6 Monitoring hosts Loss from CERN Min-RTT from CERN

Routing Between developing countries often use transcontinental links (like Europe in 80’s), e.g.: –Pak to Pak or India to India is direct, however, –Between Pak & India via US or Canada or Europe –Between India or Pak and Bangladesh or Sri Lanka via US or UK –India=>UK=>India (Delhi=>Mumbai)=>Nepal –India=HK=India=>Bhutan Wastes costly transcontinental bandwidth Drastically extends RTT & degrades performance Need International eXchange Points (IXPs)

Bandwidth & Internet use Note Log scale for BW India region leader Pakistan leads bw/pop Nepal very poor Pakistan leads % users Sri Lanka leads hosts% Pakistan leads bw/pop Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan very poor Bit/s

S Asia MOS & thruput Mean Opinion Score to S Asia from US Daily throughputs from US to S Asia Last mile problems Divides into 2 –India, Maldives, Pakistan, Sri Lanka –Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan Usable RTT ms RTT NIIT to QAU Pak (1 week) Mo Tu WeTh Fr Sa Su weekend vs. w’day, day vs night = heavy congestion Pakistan

VC from this meeting They can be made to work, they are exceedingly valuable, takes expertise/support, may not use Internet, Internet is cheap.

DAI vs. Thru & S. Asia More details, also show populations Compare S. Asia with developed countries, C. Asia

Conclusions DD exists between regions, within regions, within countries –S Asia divides into two –Applications fail, no connectivity, telnet, VoIP/multimedia, Grid clusters and data transport (e.g. Pakistan) Decreasing use of satellites, expensive, but still needed for many remote countries in Africa and C. Asia Last mile problems, and network fragility Affects data transfer, multi-media, VoIP Internet performance (non subjective, relatively easy/quick to measure) correlate strongly with economic/technical indices –Increase coverage of monitoring to understand Internet performance Need funding (used to be DoE (research in net mon), SLAC, US State Dept, HEC/MOST Pak), Pak continues, US needs to match

More information/Questions Acknowledgements: –Harvey Newman and ICFA/SCIC for a inspiration, I2 for this meeting and immediate demand; NIIT/Pakistan, Maxim Grigoriev (FNAL), Connie Logg (SLAC), 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.htmlwww-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger sdu.ictp.it/pinger/africa.html Case Studies: – +Case+Studyhttps://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/South+Asia +Case+Study – Sahara+Case+Studyhttps://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Sub- Sahara+Case+Study –