4 ms·

The backbone cables loop around the coast of Africa. I believe you that this is the case, but the map you linked is a submarine cable map. If there were backbo

The backbone cables loop around the coast of Africa. I believe you that this is the case, but the map you linked is a submarine cable map. If there were backbone ables inside of Africa, they wouldn't show up.

SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
> If there were backbone cables inside of Africa, they wouldn't show up (on that map of submarine cables) Good point. I haven't found a lot of resource on this topic. The exception, which discusses the growth of terrestrial networks is this: http://www.africabandwidthmaps.com/?p=5505 http://www.africabandwidthmaps.com/?p=5505 e.g. > Of the total activated/ sold bandwidth of 3.319 Tbps in Sub-Saharan Africa by December 2016, 3.065 Tbps (92.3%) was supplied directly by submarine cable. > Of the total bandwidth of 3.319 Tbps in Sub-Saharan Africa by December 2016, 248 Gbps (7.5%) was supplied by terrestrial cross-border networks connected to submarine cables. The completion of new cross-border links, and the expansion of capacity on others, has seen the volume of intra-regional traffic backhauled to submarine cable landing points increase by 65% in the last year I note also this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18301912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18301912 > I believe at present most traffic between Nigeria and South Africa transits London Simply, the network is at present not optimised for traffic between e.g. Johannesburg and Lagos. Why would it be? There's not a lot of it. An internet user in Johannesburg is mostly either going to look at domestic websites in SA, or the "top 1000" sites, hosted in EU and USA. I hope that this will change over time, and better data centres in Africa is part of that.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  > There's not a lot of it. If internet traffic is anything like road traffic then the presence of a highway would generate more traffic. Having a crappy connection pretty much guarantees that there is little traffic!
thatcloudguy 8y ago
There isn't much overland cable in Africa. The distance is too far to maintain in a cost effective way.
Havoc 8y ago
There are no overland backbones to my knowledge. At least not in the continuous sense - I suppose you could patch together a web of adjacent country networks. Country internal there is a pretty good web of them, mostly to connect cellphone towers. In reality everything goes via the submarine cables though. It's easier than fighting through the landrights of 6,000 miles of sometimes shaky countries.
sangnoir 8y ago
> If there were backbone ables inside of Africa, they wouldn't show up. There are, and the information in sibling comments is either wrong or outdated. Liquid has a fiber network that literally stretches from "Cape to Cairo"[1]. Liquid has a presence in Nigeria, but it's not connected to the overland fiber network [1] https://www.liquidtelecom.com/about-us/network-map.html https://www.liquidtelecom.com/about-us/network-map.html
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
  That's very interesting, thanks. And also fairly new? > covering Africa's fastest-growing economies, where no fixed network has ever existed before.
  - sangnoir 8y ago
    Yes, it's fairly new. The build-out was done in the last ~ 3-5 years, but it was only lit in stages within the past 2 years.

SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago

> If there were backbone cables inside of Africa, they wouldn't show up (on that map of submarine cables) Good point. I haven't found a lot of resource on this topic. The exception, which discusses the growth of terrestrial networks is this: http://www.africabandwidthmaps.com/?p=5505 http://www.africabandwidthmaps.com/?p=5505 e.g. > Of the total activated/ sold bandwidth of 3.319 Tbps in Sub-Saharan Africa by December 2016, 3.065 Tbps (92.3%) was supplied directly by submarine cable. > Of the total bandwidth of 3.319 Tbps in Sub-Saharan Africa by December 2016, 248 Gbps (7.5%) was supplied by terrestrial cross-border networks connected to submarine cables. The completion of new cross-border links, and the expansion of capacity on others, has seen the volume of intra-regional traffic backhauled to submarine cable landing points increase by 65% in the last year I note also this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18301912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18301912 > I believe at present most traffic between Nigeria and South Africa transits London Simply, the network is at present not optimised for traffic between e.g. Johannesburg and Lagos. Why would it be? There's not a lot of it. An internet user in Johannesburg is mostly either going to look at domestic websites in SA, or the "top 1000" sites, hosted in EU and USA. I hope that this will change over time, and better data centres in Africa is part of that.

jacquesm 8y ago
> There's not a lot of it. If internet traffic is anything like road traffic then the presence of a highway would generate more traffic. Having a crappy connection pretty much guarantees that there is little traffic!

thatcloudguy 8y ago

There isn't much overland cable in Africa. The distance is too far to maintain in a cost effective way.

Havoc 8y ago

There are no overland backbones to my knowledge. At least not in the continuous sense - I suppose you could patch together a web of adjacent country networks. Country internal there is a pretty good web of them, mostly to connect cellphone towers. In reality everything goes via the submarine cables though. It's easier than fighting through the landrights of 6,000 miles of sometimes shaky countries.

sangnoir 8y ago

> If there were backbone ables inside of Africa, they wouldn't show up. There are, and the information in sibling comments is either wrong or outdated. Liquid has a fiber network that literally stretches from "Cape to Cairo"[1]. Liquid has a presence in Nigeria, but it's not connected to the overland fiber network [1] https://www.liquidtelecom.com/about-us/network-map.html https://www.liquidtelecom.com/about-us/network-map.html

SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
That's very interesting, thanks. And also fairly new? > covering Africa's fastest-growing economies, where no fixed network has ever existed before.
- sangnoir 8y ago
  Yes, it's fairly new. The build-out was done in the last ~ 3-5 years, but it was only lit in stages within the past 2 years.