1 Prepared by: Les Cottrell SLAC, Umar Kalim SEECS,NUST/SLAC IHY-Africa/SCINDA 2009, Livingstone, Zambia, 7-12 June African Internet Performance: How bad is it; what can be done? eGY

2 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 3 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;African languagesIgboSwahiliHausa AmharicYoruba Plus Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Afrikaans, Spanish, Indian languages, othersArabicEnglish FrenchPortuguese AfrikaansSpanishIndian languages 4

5 African World Status Internet city connections Fibres Light at night Capacity From Telegeography

Sub-Saharan broadband costs off-scale 6 Source ITU 1 yr of Internet access > average annual income of most Africans, Survey by Paul Budde Communications

7 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

8 PingER Methodology extremely Simple 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 ICTP

9 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

10 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

Loss 11 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 IPTV Africa by far worst region, times worse than developed regions

12 World Throughput Trends Behind Europe 5 Yrs: Russia, Latin America, Mid East 6 Yrs: SE Asia 9 Yrs: South Asia 12 Yrs: Cent. Asia 16 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

13 Some Other World Views Voice & video (de-jitter) Network & Host Fragility Data Transfer Capacity

14 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.

15 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 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. 2008ABUJA 16

17 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 installed along roads, pylons etc. remain unused because of monopoly regulation! Near Future: driven by World Cup in 2010

18 What else is driving it Huge growth ~ 3x lower penetration than any other region huge potential market Many systemic factors: Electricity, import duties, skills, disease, protectionist policies, conflict, corruption.

19 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 => IXPs Users –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 20 “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 21

22 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”) – – Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa – PingER –www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger, sdu.ictp.it/pinger/africa.htmlwww-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger sdu.ictp.it/pinger/africa.html – Global Information watch: Need network contacts in Africa:

23 Extra Slides

24 Trends: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.

25 ~ 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

26 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 ( –Africa & C. Asia not possible, S. Asia with patience OK 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

27 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 Digital Oppor tunity Rank Egypt82,073, South Africa43,743, Senegal12,938, Cameroon18,569, Nigeria139,070, Kenya38,213, Uganda31,621, Burkina Faso14,866, Cote d'Ivoire18,465, Benin8,349, Niger13,364, Mozambique21,379, Ethiopia78,697, Namibia2,067,

28 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

29 Throughput Derive from: Thru ~ 8 * 1460 _____________ (RTT * sqrt(loss))

30 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. 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: 31

PingER Sites vs IHY sites 32 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)