
State of African internetworking [pdf] - liotier
https://ripe72.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/21-Ripe_2016v5_final.pdf
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walrus01
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEACOM_%28African_cable_system%29)

[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.

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dylz
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...](https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-
discuss/2013-November/001382.html) complaints) and is announcing it in socal

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xchaotic
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)

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gerdusvz
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.

~~~
nroets
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
Pretty sure Akamai has a presence in Kenya that FB uses.

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PvsNP_ZA
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)

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acveilleux
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
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...

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muriithi
Which University was this?

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sdenton4
Maseno, just outside of Kisumu.

