Quantifying the Digital Divide from an Internet Point of View

1
Quantifying the Digital Divide from an Internet
Point of View

• Les CottrellSLAC,
• Aziz RehmatullahNIIT, Jerrod WilliamsSLAC, Akbar
  KhanNIIT
• Presented at the Optimization Technologies for
  Low-Bandwidth Networks, ICTP Workshop, Trieste,
  Italy, 9-20 October 2006
• http//www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/scs/net/talk06/di
  gital-divide-oct06.ppt

2
Prolog Internet growth

• Internet use, performance coverage exploding
• gt 1Billion users
• In 2004 users in China 6 gt 78Million
• Traffic through Amsterdam increased fourfold in
  2005
• CERN-US connection 9.6kbsp 85 to 10Gbits/s today
• Typical backbone bandwidths (including
  transoceanic) 2.5 10Gbits for developed world

3
Prolog New Technologies

• The transition to the use of "dense wavelength
  division multiplexing" (DWDM) to support multiple
  optical links on a single fiber has made these
  links increasingly affordable, and this has
  resulted in a substantially increased number of
  these links coming into service.
• At the end nodes the commoditization of Gigabit
  and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, new buses, and faster
  cpus are driving performance higher and costs
  lower.

4
Prolog Developing world

• The Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications
  Development (GLORIAD5) project is providing
  high speed connectivity especially for Russia and
  China 10GBps around globe by Mar 07)
• The Trans-Eurasia Information Network (TEIN26)
  is improving the connectivity of the Asia Pacific
  region
• The Latin America Cooperation of Advanced
  Networks (CLARA7) and the Western Hemisphere
  Research and Education Networks (WHREN8) Links
  Interconnecting Latin America (LILA) projects are
  bringing Gbits/s to Latin America
• EUMEDConnect9 is improving connectivity to the
  Mediterranean
• The East African Submarine System (EASSy10) is
  bringing fibre to the E. coast of Africa
• Four Southern African National Research and
  Education Networks (NRENS) in Kenya, Malawi,
  Mozambique, Rwanda and South Africa have come
  together to found the Ubuntunet11 Alliance for
  Research and Education Networking with the goal
  of delivering Gigabits/s connectivity to their
  countries and the rest of the world.

5
Introduction

• PingER project originally (1995) for measuring
  network performance for US, Europe and Japanese
  HEP community
• Extended this century to measure Digital Divide
• Last year added monitoring sites in S. Africa,
  Pakistan India
• Will report on network performance to these
  regions from US and Europe trends, comparisons
• Plus early results within and between these
  regions

6
PingER Methodology
gtping remhost
Remote Host (typically a server)
Internet
Monitoring host
10 ping request packets each 30 mins
Once a Day
Ping response packets
Data Repository _at_ SLAC
Measure Round Trip Time Loss
7
PingER coverage

• 120 countries (99 worlds connected
  population), 35 monitor sites in 14 countries
• New monitoring sites in Cape Town, Rawalpindi,
  Bangalore
• Monitor 25 African countries, contain 83 African
  population

8
Minimum RTT from US

• Maps show increased coverage
• Min RTT indicates best possible, i.e. no queuing
• gt600ms probably geo-stationary satellite
• Between developed regions min-RTT dominated by
  distance
• Little improvement possible
• Only a few places still using satellite, mainly
  Africa Central Asia
• E. African Submarine System (EASSy)

2000
2006
9
Effect of Losses

• Losses critical, cause multi-second timeouts
• Typically depend on a bad link, so distance
  independent
• gt 4-6 video-conf irritating, non-native language
  speakers unable to communicate
• gt 4-5 irritating for interactive telnet, X
  windows
• gt2.5 VoIP annoying every 30 seconds or so
• Burst losses of gt 1 slightly annoying for VoIP

10
Losses from SLAC to world

• hosts monitored increased seven-fold
• Increase in fraction with good loss
• Despite adding more hosts in developing world

• gt12
• gt5 lt12
• gt2.5 lt 5
• gt1 lt 2.5
• lt 1

11
Loss Improvement by Population

• Loss by country weighted by population of country

12
Unreachability from SLAC

• All pings of a set fail unreachable
• Shows fragility, distance independent
• Developed regions US, Canada, Europe, Oceania
  lead
• Factor of 10 improvement in 8 years
• Africa, S. Asia followed by L. America worst off

13
World thruput seen from US
Throughput 1460Bytes / (RTTsqrt(loss))
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
14
Compare to US residence

• Sites in many countries have bandwidthlt US
  residence

15
S. Asia Africa from US

• Data v. noisy but there are noticeable trends
• India may be holding its own
• Africa Pakistan are falling behind

Pakistan
16
India to India

• Monitoring host in Bangalore from Oct 05
• Too early to tell much, also need more sites,
  have some good contacts
• 3 remote hosts (need to increase)
• RE sites in Mumbai, Pune Hyderabad
• Government site in AP
• Lot of difference between sites, Gov. site sees
  heavy congestion

17
Pakistan to Pakistan

• 3 monitoring sites in Islamabad/Rawalpindi
• NIIT via NTC, NIIT via Micronet, NTC (PERN
  supplier)
• All monitor 7 Universities in ISB, Lahore, KHI,
  Peshawar
• Careful many University sites have proxies in US
  Europe
• Minimum RTTs best NTC 6ms, NIIT/NTC 10ms - extra
  4ms for last mile, NIIT/Micronet 60ms slower
  links different routes
• Queuing Avg(RTT)-Min(RTT)
• NIIT/NTC heavily congested
• 200-400ms queuing
• Better when students holiday
• NIIT/Micronet NTC OK
• Outages show fragility

NIIT
Holiday
18
Pakistan Network Fragility
Remote host outages
NIIT/NTC
NTC
NIIT/Micronet
NIIT outage
NIIT/NTC heavily congested Other sites OK
19
Pakistan International fragility

• Typically once a month losses go to 20

Loss
RTT ms
Feb05
Another fiber outage, this time of 3 hours! Power
cable dug up by excavators of Karachi Water
Sewage Board
Jul05
Fiber cut off Karachi causes 12 day outage
Jun-Jul 05, Huge losses of confidence and
business

• Infrastructure appears fragile
• Losses to QEA NIIT are 3-8 averaged over month

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Routing from S Africa
Many systemic factorsElectricity, Import
duties,Skills, disease 915M people 14 world
population, 2.2 of world Internet users

• Seen from ZA
• Only Botswana Zimbabwe are direct
• Most go via Europe or USA
• Wastes costly international bandwidth

21
Satellites vs Terrestrial

• Terrestrial links via SAT3 SEAMEW
  (Mediterranean)
• Terrestrial not available to all within countries

PingER min-RTT measurements from S. African TENET
monitoring station
22
2006
23
Between Regions

• Red ellipses show within region
• Blue min(RTT)
• Red min-avg RTT
• India/Pak green ellipses
• ZA heavy congestion
• Botswana, Argentina, Madascar, Ghana, BF
• India better off than Pak

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Overall (Aug 06)

• Sorted by Average throughput
• Within region performance better (black ellipses)
• Europe, N. America, E. Asia generally good
• M. East, Oceania, S.E. Asia, L. America
  acceptable
• Africa, C. Asia, S. Asia poor

25
UNDP Human Development Index (HDI)

• A long and healthy life, as measured by life
  expectancy at birth
• Knowledge, as measured by the adult literacy rate
  (with two-thirds weight) and the combined
  primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment
  ratio (with one-third weight)
• A decent standard of living, as measured by GDP
  per capita.

26
UNDP Technology Achievement Index (TAI)

• Creation of technology (e.g. patents, royalties)
  
• diffusion of recent innovations (Internet
  hosts/capita, high medium tech export)
• Diffusion of old innovations (log phones/capita,
  log of electric consumption/capita)
• Human skills (years of schooling, enrollment in
  tertiary level in science, math engineering).

• Less coverage (50 countries vs. 96 HDI )
• Linear fit (both variables technology related)
• Better fit, fewer outliers

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Why does it matter Science

• Scientists cannot collaborate as equal partners
  unless they have connectivity to share data,
  results, ideas etc.
• Distance education needs good communication for
  access to libraries, journals, educational
  materials, video, access to other teachers and
  researchers.

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Why does it matter Business

• G8 specifically pledged support for African
  higher education and research by Helping develop
  skilled professionals for Africa's private and
  public sectors, through supporting networks of
  excellence between African's and other countries'
  institutions of higher education and centres of
  excellence in science and technology
  institutions G8 specifically pledged support for
  African higher education and research by Helping
  develop skilled professionals for Africa's
  private and public sectors, through supporting
  networks of excellence between African's and
  other countries' institutions of higher education
  and centres of excellence in science and
  technology institutions

Prahalad and Hart

• Saturating western markets
• High growth IT markets BRIC
• NOT business as usual
• New business models
• Distinct needs
• Dearth of distribution channels

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What can we do?

• The worldwide science and education community is
  in a unique position to facilitate persistent,
  non-threatening dialog and increased cooperation
  between nations that have often been at odds.
• Has a track record
• first permanent Internet connection to mainland
  China1
• initiating the "Silk Road" satellite system2 to
  bring connectivity to central Asia
• upgrading connectivity to Brazil leading the
  installation and demonstrating the first 622 Mbps
  connection to India
• the efforts of the International Committee for
  Future Accelerators (ICFA) Standing Committee on
  Inter-regional Connectivity (SCIC3)
• and the free eJournals delivery service4 of the
  Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical
  Physics (ICTP) etc
• 1 Networking with China, R. L. A. Cottrell,
  C. Granieri, L. Fan, R. Xu, Y. Karita, CHEP04,
  Japan, also SLAC-PUB-6478, Aug 1994
• 2 See http//www.silkproject.org/
• 3 See http//cern.ch/icfa-scic/
• 4 See http//www.ejds.org/
• Extend PingER coverage, contacts for more
  monitoring remote sites, jerrodw_at_slac.stanford.e
  du, cottrell_at_slac.stanford.edu

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Need contacts, can you help?

• Need monitoring sites in Africa (only have S.
  Africa)
• Remote sites in
• Africa
• All central African countries
• E. Africa Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe
• N Africa Libya
• W Africa Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia,
  Sierra Leone, Togo
• S Africa Swaziland
• L America
• Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba,
  Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay
• Mid East
• Iraq, Palestine, Syria
• SE Asia
• Cambodia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam
• S. Asia
• Bangladesh

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Conclusions

• S. Asia and Africa 10 years behind and falling
  further behind creating a Digital Divide within a
  Digital Divide
• India appears better than Africa or Pakistan
• Last mile problems, and network fragility
• Decreasing use of satellites, still needed for
  many remote countries in Africa and C. Asia
• EASSy project will bring fibre to E. Africa
• Growth in users 2000-2005 400 Africa, 4000
  Pakistan networks not keeping up
• Need more sites in developing regions and longer
  time period of measurements

32
More information

• Acknowledgements
• Harvey Newman and ICFA/SCIC for a raison detre,
  ICTP for contacts and education on Africa,
  NIIT/Pakistan for code development for PingER,
  USAID MoST/Pakistan for development funding
• PingER
• www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger
• Human Development
• http//www.gapminder.org/