7 ms·

State of African internetworking [pdf]

49 points by liotier 10y ago

xchaotic 10y ago
Unsurprisingly, there is far less infrastructure than in developed countries and you generally end up paying more for inferior serivice. If, say, you're interested in setting up a startup, you are best off in metropolitan areas. With the majority of the continent population still scattered, you have to be wary that the being expensive or simply unavailable is still a major barrier for many potential users (hence initiatives like Google Loon and Internet.org - you can't grow your Internet startup if your users have no Internet)
PvsNP_ZA 10y ago
Haha, I still remember Winston the pigeon racing to deliver his 4GB of data... For anyone interested: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm
- acveilleux 10y ago
  Based on the claim of 4% of 4GB (i.e: 160MB) in 2h, upload speed was ~180 kb/sec. Which is only marginally slower than what passes for broadband in lots of rural Canada (i.e.: Bell Alliant's best offering is 640k/s upload speed for a DSL, in very limited locale, they have 50+ Mbps upload fibre but coverage is tiny.)
  - sdenton4 10y ago
    I was working at a university in rural Kenya for a while, and remember getting 4mb/s download speeds. This was kind of disconcerting, as the total bandwidth for the university was about twice that! The university networks were difficult for students to get access to, and the faculty and admins had little experience with using it. Additionally, super high prices for mobile internet meant people watch their data usage very closely, and are less likely to explore and discover new content sources. Things are changing quickly, though...
    - muriithi 10y ago
      Which University was this?
      - sdenton4 10y ago
        Maseno, just outside of Kisumu.
gerdusvz 10y ago
If you target mobile and your app/site can work on slow connections then the market is huge. For example South Africa has about 20 million users(out of 50 million) with some internet access but only about 5-10 million has broadband. South Africa and Kenya has good and fast internet in the cities and large towns. Don't expect to use AWS or Azure because none of the mayor cloud providers has a DC in Africa. So hosting local is advisable otherwise you incur latency of at best 180ms.
- seany 10y ago
  Even if they did, depending on what countries you were aiming for your network route might take you to Europe first :-p
- ajpgrealish 10y ago
  What hosting services would you recommend when targeting users in East Africa? Currently I use AWS's European regions but the latency to these is high.
- nroets 10y ago
  The audience is used to longer load times. www.facebook.com does not have a server in Africa (I live in South Africa and my ping time to FB is 200 ms more than my ping time to Google.)
  - okal 10y ago
    Pretty sure Akamai has a presence in Kenya that FB uses.
walrus01 10y ago
Understanding African ISP network topology is only possible with a thorough knowledge of where the OSI layer 1 is: specifically, where the submarine cables are, and where they are not. The cables that reached Accra, Ghana in the past ten years for transport capacity to London are a good example. And the more recent cables that connect Sierra Leone, Liberia ,etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EASSy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EASSy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT-3/WASC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT-3/WASC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEAMS_%28cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEAMS_%28cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SACS_%28cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SACS_%28cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEACOM_%28African_cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEACOM_%28African_cable_system... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACE_%28cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACE_%28cable_system%29 There is still a great deal of network traffic that takes a round-trip to Europe before reaching another African nation. As an example: If you look at the BGP adjacencies and IP space, all of the ISPs in Freetown, Sierra Leone are logically the same as if they were in a suburb of London. Things are also heavily imbalanced in terms of the influence that .ZA wields. Something like 80% of the AFNIC IP space that is issued annually (in terms of cumulative number of newly issued ipv4 /24s) goes to .CO.ZA ISPs.
- dylz 10y ago
  How much of afrinic's IP space do you think is being used outside of the region for profit/hoarding? for example apparently a single person owns 154.80.0.0/12, 45.199.0.0/16 (https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-discuss/2013-November/001382.html https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-discuss/2013... complaints) and is announcing it in socal

49 points by liotier 10y ago

Unsurprisingly, there is far less infrastructure than in developed countries and you generally end up paying more for inferior serivice. If, say, you're interested in setting up a startup, you are best off in metropolitan areas. With the majority of the continent population still scattered, you have to be wary that the being expensive or simply unavailable is still a major barrier for many potential users (hence initiatives like Google Loon and Internet.org - you can't grow your Internet startup if your users have no Internet)

PvsNP_ZA 10y ago

Haha, I still remember Winston the pigeon racing to deliver his 4GB of data... For anyone interested: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm

acveilleux 10y ago
Based on the claim of 4% of 4GB (i.e: 160MB) in 2h, upload speed was ~180 kb/sec. Which is only marginally slower than what passes for broadband in lots of rural Canada (i.e.: Bell Alliant's best offering is 640k/s upload speed for a DSL, in very limited locale, they have 50+ Mbps upload fibre but coverage is tiny.)
- sdenton4 10y ago
  I was working at a university in rural Kenya for a while, and remember getting 4mb/s download speeds. This was kind of disconcerting, as the total bandwidth for the university was about twice that! The university networks were difficult for students to get access to, and the faculty and admins had little experience with using it. Additionally, super high prices for mobile internet meant people watch their data usage very closely, and are less likely to explore and discover new content sources. Things are changing quickly, though...
  - muriithi 10y ago
    Which University was this?
    - sdenton4 10y ago
      Maseno, just outside of Kisumu.

gerdusvz 10y ago

If you target mobile and your app/site can work on slow connections then the market is huge. For example South Africa has about 20 million users(out of 50 million) with some internet access but only about 5-10 million has broadband. South Africa and Kenya has good and fast internet in the cities and large towns. Don't expect to use AWS or Azure because none of the mayor cloud providers has a DC in Africa. So hosting local is advisable otherwise you incur latency of at best 180ms.

seany 10y ago
Even if they did, depending on what countries you were aiming for your network route might take you to Europe first :-p
ajpgrealish 10y ago
What hosting services would you recommend when targeting users in East Africa? Currently I use AWS's European regions but the latency to these is high.
nroets 10y ago
The audience is used to longer load times. www.facebook.com does not have a server in Africa (I live in South Africa and my ping time to FB is 200 ms more than my ping time to Google.)
- okal 10y ago
  Pretty sure Akamai has a presence in Kenya that FB uses.

walrus01 10y ago

Understanding African ISP network topology is only possible with a thorough knowledge of where the OSI layer 1 is: specifically, where the submarine cables are, and where they are not. The cables that reached Accra, Ghana in the past ten years for transport capacity to London are a good example. And the more recent cables that connect Sierra Leone, Liberia ,etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EASSy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EASSy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT-3/WASC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT-3/WASC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEAMS_%28cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEAMS_%28cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SACS_%28cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SACS_%28cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEACOM_%28African_cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEACOM_%28African_cable_system... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACE_%28cable_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACE_%28cable_system%29 There is still a great deal of network traffic that takes a round-trip to Europe before reaching another African nation. As an example: If you look at the BGP adjacencies and IP space, all of the ISPs in Freetown, Sierra Leone are logically the same as if they were in a suburb of London. Things are also heavily imbalanced in terms of the influence that .ZA wields. Something like 80% of the AFNIC IP space that is issued annually (in terms of cumulative number of newly issued ipv4 /24s) goes to .CO.ZA ISPs.

dylz 10y ago
How much of afrinic's IP space do you think is being used outside of the region for profit/hoarding? for example apparently a single person owns 154.80.0.0/12, 45.199.0.0/16 (https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-discuss/2013-November/001382.html https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-discuss/2013... complaints) and is announcing it in socal