Using the common “ping” test between pairs of hosts, researchers at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center regularly measure how well data is flowing across global networks. Over the years, we’ve often turned to the SLAC PingER project for data on the health of Africa’s Internet networks. A variety of links can be found in our data and maps sections. However, a 2,200-word article in IEEE Spectrum by Les Cottrell of SLAC piqued our interest once again.

Since PingER’s start nearly two decades ago, researchers have set up close to 100 monitoring hosts around the globe, most of which now collectively observe about 900 target hosts in 164 countries. Quite a few hosts are in Africa – every African nation has one except for Western Sahara, Guinea-Bissau, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, and South Sudan. Over time, the project has shown how network quality has improved for most Africans. The chart below shows how a shift from satellite to terrestrial fibre has resulted in faster data transit times between at least the USA and African countries.

In the recent article, R. Les Cottrell does a great job summarizing the project. A few tidbits are especially interesting:

• The University of Kinshasa has nearly 30,000 students and faculty, but only 800 computers. Many don’t even have Internet privileges.
• A university in Kenya might pay fifty times more for 1 Gbps of bandwidth than a school in Germany for the same service.
• Looking at PingER data from Africa, it’s clear that although Internet performance is improving, it still lags the rest of the world. Packet loss, for example, remains higher than in any other region except Central Asia.
• Loss rates in Africa have begun to drop below 1 percent in the past couple of years. This is the magic number needed to support VoIP calls and video streaming.
• Since 2008, more than a dozen sub-Saharan countries have mostly left satellite Internet for fibre. As a result, the latency of their connections has dropped by approximately half.
• Africa’s throughput in 2009 was comparable to Europe’s 15 years ago. By this measure, Africa is now just 14 years behind Europe. There is a chance Africa may even catch up to Europe by 2030.

The PingER site itself is a treasure trove of data. Here, one can find a history of Internet quality. We quickly looked at round-trip times found in April 2013.

Overall:

• Average RTT from Africa to all other global regions is 359ms (only Oceania and South Asia have higher times)
• Many regions have extremely high round trip times connecting to Africa (e.g. 824ms for S.E. Asia)
• The average RTT for sites in Africa has actually increased in the past 12 months – from 376ms to 402ms
• Throughput (actual amount of information as opposed to theoretical bandwidth) within Africa is weak compared to intracontinental throughput found elsewhere. Relatively speaking, Africa is best connected to Europe, then to Africa. North America lags by another third, but is head of Latin America, and Middle East, and Asia.

In April 2013, the round trip time from:

• Burkina Faso to Senegal took less than 400ms, but the time to Togo was twice as long, and Ethiopia was nearly 3x as long.
• Brazil to South Africa took less than 500ms.
• Italy to Algeria was a fast 69ms. To East African countries was around 200ms with South Africa increasing to 250ms.
• Jordan to Ethiopia took 777ms but North African connections were under 150ms.
• Pakistan round trip times were generally in the 400-500ms range, with Tunisia and Senegal in the 200ms range.
• South Africa’s TENET connection with Rhodes University and CSIR were 18ms and 29ms, respectively. To Uganda was only 89ms, but Togo came in at 660ms. Other African nations were in the 300-450ms range.

We’ve also made a table of times from Palo Alto, California to available sites in Africa:

• Average RTT: 359ms (median 329ms)
• Lowest RTT: Sudan (143ms), Ethiopia (173ms), Morocco (188ms), Algeria (194ms)
• Highest RTT: Gabon (923ms), Liberia (923ms), Niger (803ms), Chad (771 ms), DR Congo (737ms)

Country TLD	Remote Site	April 2013 RTT (ms)
SD	SD.UST.EDU.N1	143
ET	ET.SU.EDU.N1	173
MA	MA.AGPE.N1	188
DZ	DZ.ELDJAZAIR.NET.N1	194
DZ	DZ.ALIEF	200
SO	SO.EASTAFRICAUNIVERSITY.N1	200
TN	TN.BTE.COM	209
TN	TN.FMCI.ENS.N1	209
LY	LY.NOCLIBYA.COM.N1	210
TN	TN.CCIS.ORG	211
SN	SN.ESMT	213
SN	SN.REFER.N1	213
TN	TN.AGRIPORTAIL	214
MA	MA.UCD.AC.N1	215
LY	LY.AERODEPT.EDU.N1	218
EG	EG.NAHAL.COM.N1	222
CI	CI.ACF.N1	227
LY	LY.LIBYANA.N1	228
CI	CI.NIC.N1	229
ML	ML.ORNGEMALI.NET.N1	231
EG	EG.HELWAN.EDU.N1	232
MR	MR.ADU.N1	233
SN	SN.ASER	233
MA	MA.FSJESR.AC.N1	241
GH	GH.UEW.EDU.N1	241
ML	ML.ADPF.ORG.N1	246
MR	MR.BACIM.N1	247
NG	NG.BABCOCK.EDU.N1	249
BJ	BJ.AGETUR.N1	251
CV	CV.ENACOL.N1	251
SD	SD.SUSTECH.EDU.N1	255
NG	NG.ABU.EDU.N1	255
BJ	BJ.OFFICEDUBACBENIN.N1	256
GH	GH.UCC.EDU.N1	259
NG	NG.AUN.EDU	262
NG	NG.BENUESTATE.GOV	263
MR	MR.NIC.N2	263
NE	NE.STA.N1	268
TG	TG.UB.N1	270
BJ	BJ.ORG.UAC.REFER.N1	276
BF	BF.LONAB.N1	283
MA	MA.AUI	283
CG	CG.DRTVNET.N1	290
SC	SC.MCSS.N1	300
MU	MU.UTM.AC.N1	304
CM	CM.CAMTEL.N1	308
SZ	SZ.REALBROADBAND.CO	321
SZ	SZ.ACAT.ORG.N1	323
UG	UG.STARCOM.CO.N1	324
LS	LS.LEO.CO.N1	326
KE	KE.KU.AC.N2	332
NA	NA.BIDVESTNAMIBIA.COM	333
BW	BW.OAG.ORG.N1	335
BW	BW.GOV.N1	335
RW	RW.KIE.AC.N1	338
ZW	ZW.HELLENIC.AC.N1	338
RW	RW.RWANDAPARLIAMENT.N1	341
NA	NA.BRAHMAN.IWAY	343
NA	NA.GIJIMA.COM	348
UG	UG.UTL.CO.N1	348
NA	NA.MME.GOV.N1	352
NA	NA.AGRINAMIBIA.COM.N1	355
MZ	MZ.MICTI.CO.N1	358
RE	RE.IZI.N1	361
KE	KE.UONBI.AC.N2	361
NG	NG.FUTMINNA.EDU.N1	361
DJ	DJ.RIESGROUP.N1	363
MU	MU.NOMAD.N1	365
ZW	ZW.ACROSSAFRICATOURS.CO.N2	367
ZA	ZA.CSIR.CO.N1	367
MG	MG.FID	372
BW	BW.BANKOFBOTSWANA.N1	372
MW	MW.KCN.UNIMA.N1	378
ZA	ZA.SAGRID.AC.N1	378
MG	MG.UNIV-MAHAJANGA.N1	378
ZA	ZA.RU.AC.N1	380
TZ	TZ.TELECOM.N1	380
ZA	ZA.TENET.AC.N1	389
ZA	ZA.BONTANY.UWC.AC.N1	390
ZA	ZA.AC.NWU.N1	393
MG	MG.CNAPS	396
ZA	ZA.TENET.AC.N1	412
ZM	ZM.AFYAMZURI,ORG.N1	464
GA	GA.CNSS.N1	519
BI	BI.BONESHA.N1	526
ET	ET.AMHARAINFO.GOV.N1	538
ZM	ZM.LECHWE.SCH.N1	541
ZW	ZW.PAYNET.CO.N1	547
BF	BF.UNIV-OUAGA.N1	554
CD	CD.IC.N1	648
CD	CD.GBS.N1	704
ER	ER.TFANUS.COM.N1	710
CD	CD.MICROCOM.N1	713
NE	NE.ASSEMBLEE.NE	722
AO	AO.NEXUS.N1	732
CD	CD.AFRINET.N1	737
TD	TD.REFER.ORG.N1	771
NE	NE.ACMAD.N1	803
LR	LR.GOV.N1	904
GA	GA.REFER,N1	923