Impact of the Russo Ukraine war on ping response times

Table of Contents

Introduction 

This page provides information on ping response times measured every 30 minutes from the SLAC National Lab (40 miles south of San Francisco in California, US) to over 25 sites in Ukraine around the time of the Russo Ukraine war starting in February 2022. See https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/slideshows/a-timeline-of-the-russia-ukraine-conflict for events leading up to the crisis in 2022,  and see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine for progress of the 2022 war.

On 24 February 2022, the Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine by Russian Armed Forces previously concentrated along the border. At that time the PingER project was only monitoring 2 sites in Ukraine: mail.kipt.kharkov.ua and ns.kiev.ua. Since then we have added over 20 more sites.

In addition one of the original two monitored sites (mail.kipt.kharkov.us) was a PingER Beacon site that was monitored from 10 PingER sites around the world, in particular, the closest PingER monitoring site from Ukraine was DESY in Hamburg Germany.

Summary April 9, 6pm California time

There are some notable changes in some of the Round Trip Times (RTT)  for the:

• The Odessa I. I. Michnikov National University a step up starting Feb 27, starting around 14:00 GMT, and then a larger step down on Feb 28 around 20:00 GMT. 
  Then again on Mar 2, 2022 there is a marked increase in RTT between 16:00 and 20:30.
• The Western Ukrainian National University, which is farthest from the invading forces, saw a step up starting around 9:00am GMT Feb 25, 2020, then steps down on Feb 28 around noon and 20:00 GMT. Then on Mar 2 16:30-20:00 there is a burst of increased RTTs.
• There are a couple of bursts of increased RTTs seen from SLAC to Kyiv Academic University on Feb 28, 2022 11:00-12:00 and again on Mar 2, 17:00 - 18:30GMT.
• There is a step increase in RTTs seen from DESY, Hamburg Germany to the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology starting 18:00  March 2, 2022 GMT.
• The Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economic, Kharkiv saw a step increase in RTT of about 8ms around 10:0am Mar 3, 2022 GMT
• The Vinnytsia National Technical University saw an RTT step upward of about 3 ms around 16:30 Mar 3, 2022 GMT.
• We have been monitoring the  Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology since 2004. It was no longer pingable from SLAC by name mail.kipt.kharkov.ua or address 193.239.180.1 after 13:15 Mar 3, 2022 GMT (5:15 am Mar 3, 2022) and returned around 7:30am Mar 4  GMT. Also the web page  https://mail.kipt.kharkov.ua/  no longer responded during this period. 
  Also the RTT from SLAC to this host noticed a step increase of almost 5msec around 2100 hours GMT followed by another step increase.
  No response was seen from pings starting around 19:00 3/10/2022 GMT. Also the name mail.kipt.kharkov.ua did not resolve to an address. Then it responded by address (but the name did not resolve) again around 15:30 3/16/2022 GMT, also, the web site did not respond. By 1:02pm 3/17/2022 (California time) the web page was again responding and the name service was working for mail.kipt.kharkov.ua giving the same address (193.239.180.1) as before the outage. Then following Mar 23 22:00 GMT it again stopped responding and started responding again around 15:00 Mar 25, 2022 GMT.
  The effects are more marked in the ping measurements from DESY, Hamburg, Germany since it is much closer than SLAC to the Ukraine.  Comparing the minimum RTT of (~44ms )prior to Mar 1st with that (~33ms) after 18:00 on Mar 19, there is a 11ms change.
  This is confirmed looking at the RTTs between SLAC and mail.kipt.kharkov.ua and comparing the minimum RTTs prior to Mar 1st (~190ms) with those after Mar 16 (~180ms) indicating a drop of ~10ms.
• The National University of Shipbuilding, Mykolaiv (www.nuos-international.com.ua) saw no responses after 21:07 Mar 5 and before 02:37 Mar 6 when it started to respond again. It again no longer responded to pings after the early morning of Mar 21, 2022 (GMT).
• The Chernihiv National University of Technology site www.chnpu.edu.ua saw a step increase of 20ms plus some instability and losses after Mar 8 07:07 and until just before Mar 8 16:37. The host was no longer pingable from GMT 14:30 Mar 11, 2022 onwards. Also, the website no longer responded. It again started responding from GMT 09:30 Mar 16, 2022 onwards until the early morning of Mar 21, 2022 (GMT) when it stopped responding to pings.
• The Lviv State University of Physical Culture, also saw a similar step increase of 20ms plus some instability and losses after Mar 8 07:07 and until just before Mar 8 16:37.
• The https://www.hostmaster.ua web site originally in Kyiv moved to California as www.hostmaster.ua.cdn.cloudflare.net (104.18.24.87) sometime after Mar 9 and before Mar 15. The host hostmaster.ua (193.29.222.26) remained in Kyiv. Also according to https://hostmaster.ua/news/?pr20220226 'As of 2/.26/2022 the .UA domain registry company "Hostmeister" has transferred to European countries servers that ensure the operability of the .UA domain. Previously, the servers were located in Kiev.'
• PingER has been monitoring ns.kiev.ua since the year 2000. Up until March 4th, 2022 the daily inter-packet-delay-variation or jitter (see https://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/tutorial.html) of the ping RTT was consistently below 0.7ms. Since then it has climbed to over 7ms.
• The following hosts have not responded to pings for extended times:
  • Chernihiv National University of Technology (www.chnpu.edu.ua) stopped responding early morning of Mar 21, 2022, then starting Apr 16, 06:37 GMT we were able to get a response albeit at a new IP address (193.151.106.66=>46.149.36.68).
  • Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology (mail.kipt.kharkov.ua (193.239.180.1)) stopped responding Mar 10, 19:00 GMT; restarted Mar 16 15:30 GMT; stopped responding Mar 23, 22:00, 2022 GMT; restarted  Mar 25 15:00, 2022 GMT; stopped responding Mar 28 10:14 GMT. In fact no hosts in the range 193.239.180.0/24 responded Apr 22, 17:00,2022 PST.  Then it restarted responding Apr 29 12:30, 2022 GMT only to stop again Apr 30 19:00, 2022 GMT and restart again May 5 12:00, 2022 GMT.
  • The National University of Shipbuilding, Mykolaiv (www.nuos-international.com.ua) saw no responses after Mar 5 21:07, 2022 GMT and before Mar 6 02:37, 2022 GMT when it started to respond again. It again no longer responded to pings Mar 22  00:07, 2022 GMT but restarted responding  Mar 22 00:36, 2022 GMT.
  • The Institute of Mathematics of NAS of Ukraine, Kiev (www.imath.kiev.ua) did not respond from Mar 22, 16:00  GMT until Mar 23, 14:00 GMT.
  • The Ukraine Hostmaster (www.hostmaster.ua) for the Top Level Domain  UA did not respond between Mar 11 22:30 GMT and Mar 12 06:00 GMT.

I also note that all the web servers (except ns.kiev.ua, www.kipt.kharkov.ua (the web site for mail.kipt.kharkov.ua),  and www.hostmaster.ua (moved to California sometime after Mar 9 and before Mar 15)) that PingER is monitoring and are responding, are still serving web pages.

State of war Wikipedia

Animated map from Wikipedia. Click on map for animation	Current state from Wikipedia. Click on map for latest

Plots of PingER round trip times

Coordinates of Ukrainian ping targets

Updated 1/4/2023 to add: Kryvyi Rih National University, the National Transport Museum in Kiev, and the Kyiv National University, and on 1/5/2023 Mykhailo Ostrogradsky National University of Kremenchuk, Institute of Policy and Strategy Analysis in Kiev, and Lviv University of Trade and Economics.

Prior to 1/4/2023.

Map of Oblasts (Regions of Ukraine)

There are 24 Ukrainian Oblasts (see Wikipedia). We monitor sites in 16 of the Oblasts.

Number of Ukrainian hosts monitored from SLAC by day

As the war progressed we added more Ukrainian hosts to the list of monitored sites, and lost a few.

Summary for Sites in Ukraine seen from EDU.SLAC.STANFORD.PINGER

Summary for Sites in Ukraine seen from EDU.SLAC.STANFORD.PINGER

Median value of medians is 180.215

Map of monitored sites

Using https://batchgeo.com/ and the above table of the "Coordinates of Ukrainian ping targets" to derive https://batchgeo.com/map/a1a293ce71040705f722f1b45064b628(click on link or see below):

Minimum RTT

As a check that each target host was in Ukraine we plotted their distance from SLAC versus the minimum RTT recorded for March 2022. The correlation between minimum RTT and distance from SLAC gives us some confidence that the hosts are indeed in Ukraine.

Jitter (Inter Packet  Delay Variation - IPDV)

We might expect the network performance to hosts that are in a war zone may be degraded and show up as more variability on the RTTs. A sensitive measure of variability of the RTTs is the Jitter between adjacent measurements. We use a derivation of the Inter Packet Delay Variation (IPDV) to estimate the Jitter from the Ping measurements (see https://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/tutorial.html). In addition we characterize the proximity of the war to a host in Ukraine by its proximity defined  as:

We then plot the IPDV and proximity for each Ukrainian host monitored and look at the correlation between the IPDV and proximity

There is a small positive correlation between the proximity and IPDV.

Traceroute to Ukraine

Visual traceroute from San Francisco to https://geotraceroute.com/?host=www.ldufk.edu.ua in Lviv Ukraine

Comparing traceroutes on different days from SLAC to www.ldufk.edu.ua,

see https://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/traceroutearchive.cgi?from=www.slac.stanford.edu&to=www.ldufk.edu.ua

Time series for monitored sites

The times in the plots below are GMT. You can click on the graphs to increase their size. The sites are monitored by their IP address (as opposed to their name)

mail.kipt.kharkov.ua (Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, Kharkiv, latitude longitude 50.0867 36.2522)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kharkiv_(2022)

Monitored from DESY

www.luguniv.edu.ua¹ (Taras Shevchenko National University, Luhansk, latitude longitude 49.28157 38.90258)

Note its low value of RTT. We no longer report on this host since it appears to be in Germany.

www.dnmu.com.ua (Donetsk National Medical University,  Donetsk, latitude longitude 48.0027 37.8278)

www.hneu.edu.ua (Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economic, Kharkiv, latitude longitude 50.0139 36.22216)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kharkiv_(2022)

snau.edu.ua (Sumy National Agrarian University, Sumy, latitude longitude 50.8817 34.7758)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sumy

The host was no longer pingable by name or address on 11/12/2022 thru 11/13/2022.

www.chnpu.edu.ua (Chernihiv National University of Technology, latitude longitude 51.5051 31.33316)

No response between Mar 11 15:00 and Mar 12 09:00, then again between Mar 21 04:30 and Apr 16 06:30.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Chernihiv.

Later...

www.onu.edu.ua (Odessa I. I. Michnikov National University, latitude longitude 46.4875 30.7290)

We were unable to ping the ONU site by name starting 03:00 Nov 16, 2022 GMT. In addition the web site http://onu.edu.ua/en/ was not accessible. However the IP address 91.208.138.242 did respond to ping with an RTT of 197ms, but not to http on 11/18/2022. Also following this date nslookup was unable to find a name for 91.208.138.242.

Looking at https://www.unesco.org/en/ukraine-war/damages-and-victims#educational-institutions we note that as of 11/18/2022: "Damage to Ukraine learning Institutions damaged by bombing and shelling amounted to 2739 suffering with 2406 damaged and 333 destroyed."n institutions in Ukraine
2333 destroy

See In more detail:

Looking at the ping 91.208.138.242 RTTs across this date we see below there appears to be change in behavior 

Before 11/18/2022

After 11/18/2022

en.mdu.in.ua (Mariupol State University, Mariupol, latitude longitude  47.1021 37.52356)

The logarithmic Increase in roundtrip times starting Mar 30, 2022 and continuing through Apr 1, 2022 corresponds to the fall of most of Mariupol to Russian forces (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol). The last ping response PingER was able to get from ewn.mdu.in.ua was from just before midnight May 20, 2022. This corresponds to the fall of Mariupol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol) to Russian forces.

 www.znu.edu.ua³ (Zaporizhia National University, Zaporizhia, latitude longitude 47.189 35.1811)

www.dpsmu.com (Dnipro State Medical University, Dnipro, latitude longitude 48.46111 35.0544)

www.krm.gov.ua (Kramatorsk City Council, Kramatorsk, latitude longitude 48.7377495 37.5840575)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kramatorsk

museum.slavyansk.online (Slavic Local History Museum, Slavyansk, latitude longitude 48.8555196 37.5935091)

The site www.museum.slavyansk.online with IP address 65.21.127.155 started responding to pings again around 7:00am 11/9/2022 GMT. The ping responses this period are shown below:

The marked change in behavior starting around 11/7/2022 (in particular an increase from 168ms to 192ms or a 24ms increase in minumum RTT intermittently starting around 8/24/2022, solidifying around  9/5/2022 and extending to 11/9/2022) maybe related to a change in the location of the host responding to the address 88.212.208.67.

www.rada.com.us (Izyum Instrument-Making Plant, Izyum, latitude longitude 49.1911728 37.2460882)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Izium_(2022)

There is a loss of ping response starting Apr 19 10:30 GMT and ending Apr 21 19:30 2022 GMT.

www.kntu.net.ua² (Kherson National Technical University, Kherson, latitude longitude 46.66879 32.6354)

On Mar 2, 2022 Kherson was surrendered to the Russians. On Mar 23, 2022, Ukraine launched a counter attack(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kherson).

There was no response to pings from SLAC to www.kntu.net.ua between 16:30 May 30 and 01:00 Jun 2, 2022 GMT. Then again Jun 27 thru Jun 29. 

On November 10, 2022 the Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday announced Russia would pull out its troops from the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, the first and only regional capital to be captured by Russian forces since they invaded Ukraine in late February. By November 13, Ukraine now occupied Kherson and the west bank of the Dnipro river.

The suspiciously low RTT of just over 142 msecs may indicate the host has moved West out of Ukraine and is now closer to the US

www.ksau.kherson.ua² (Kherson State Agricultural University, Kherson, latitude longitude 46.6425 32.5821)

On Mar 2, 2022 Kherson was surrendered to the Russians. On Mar 23, 2022, Ukraine launched a counterattack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kherson).

There was no ping response from www.ksau.kherson.ua between  16:30 Apr 30 and 04:30 May 4, 2022. Then again Jun 13- Aug 25.

www.nuos-international.com.ua (National University of Shipbuilding, Mykolaiv, latitude longitude 46.9871, 31.9836)

See the Battle of Mykolaiv at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mykolaiv.

Also see the photo below from Wikipedia:

However, there was no noticeable change in ping response (the blue ping loss spike occurred on July 14 at 08:00 GMT):

www.imath.kiev.us (Institute of Mathematics of NAS of Ukraine, Kyiv, latitude longitude = 50.443 30.5142)

The battle for Kyiv lasted from Feb 25, 2022 to Apr  2, 2022, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)

ix.net.ua(Ukranian Internet Exchange, Kyiv, latitude longitude 50.4359 30.4981)

The battle for Kyiv lasted from Feb 25, 2022 to Apr  2, 2022, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)

ns.kiev.ua (Kyiv Navigator, Kyiv, latitude longitude 50.4359 30.4981)

The battle for Kyiv lasted from Feb 25, 2022 to Apr  2, 2022, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)

www.hostmaster.ua (Hostmaster, Kyiv latitude and longitude 50.4557 30.4900)

The battle for Kyiv lasted from Feb 25, 2022 to Apr  2, 2022, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)

www.archangel.kiev.ua (Saint Michael's Monastery, Kyiv, latitude longitude 50.4558 30.5208)

The battle for Kyiv lasted from Feb 25, 2022 to Apr  2, 2022, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)

www.golos.com.ua (Voice of Ukraine, Kyiv, latitude longitude = 50.4558 30.5055)

The battle for Kyiv lasted from Feb 25, 2022 to Apr  2, 2022, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)

www.kau.org.ua (Kyiv Academic University, Kyiv, latitude longitude = 50.4667 30.3608)

The battle for Kyiv lasted from Feb 25, 2022 to Apr  2, 2022, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)

www.vntu.edu.ua (Vinnytsia National Technical University, Vinnytsia, latitude longitude  = 49.2339 23.9287)

www.zu.edu.ua (Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University, Zhytomyr, latitude longitude = 50.24917 28.6178)

www.wunu.edu.ua (Western Ukrainian National University, Ternopil, latitude longitude = 49.7954 27.8248)

www.vnu.edu.ua (Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University, Luskt, latitude longitude 50.7470 25.3288)

www.ldufk.edu.ua (Lviv State University of Physical Culture, Lviv, latitude longitude 49.84115 24.0205)

Russia's regions and annexation of regions of Ukraine

At the end of September 2022, the Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a decree that four partially occupied regions (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson) of Ukraine have been annexed and are now part of Russia.

Ukraine Regions	State of Russian occupation Oct 4 after annexation

Slavyansk (or Sloviansk)

According to Wikipedia "Sloviansk was one of the focal points in the early stages of the 2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine as it was the first city to be seized by Russia-backed military troops.^[7][8] It was retaken by Ukrainian forces in July 2014...On 4 July 2022, The Guardian reported that, after the fall of the Luhansk oblast, Russian invasion troops would continue their invasion into the adjacent Donetsk oblast to attack the cities of Sloviansk and Bakhmut. In early September 2022, Ukraine began a major counteroffensive, regaining several settlements in the Kharkiv region. This relieved the pressure on Sloviansk with the fall of Lyman to Ukrainian forces on October 1st 2022."

PingER was unable to access http://www.museum.slavyansk.online at 7:50am 10/4/2022 US California time, the name did not resolve an IPv4 address, the IPv4 address continued to respond to pings. This host was identified as the Slavic Local History Museum at 3 Yunykh Kommunarov street, Slavyansk, Donetsk, Ukraine. It had the IP address 88.212.208.67. The IP name was now associated with 88.212.208.67 was 67-208-212-88.host.exepto.ru. The web site now responding to http://88.212.208.67/ and the web page from webnames.ru appeared as the link not available. 

Webnames.ru appears to be a Russian site offering "Linux-based shared plans with a control panel in Russian. It provides beginner-friendly tools, discounts on longer subscription."  The Round Trip Time (RTT) before and after 10/4/2022 do not appear to have changed.

The maps below show the situation November 10th 2022.

Sumy

There was an interruption in ping responses from SLAC to Sumy National Agrarian University (www.snau.edu.us address 5.9.136.198) following November 11 07:00 until Nov 14 02:00 GMT. Also starting around November 1st 2022 there was quite a dramatic increase in ping response losses. Then starting Nov between 21:30 and 21:59 there was a drop in minimum ping response times to 160 ms from 179ms as well as almost no ping losses persisting at least until January 4, 20023.

Mariupol

The last ping response PingER was able to get from en.mdu.in.ua was from just before midnight May 20, 2022. This corresponds to the fall of Mariupol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol) to Russian forces.

Odessa

We were unable to ping the ONU (Odessa National University) site by name starting 03:00 Nov 16, 2022 GMT. In addition the web site http://onu.edu.ua/en/ was not accessible. However the IP address 91.208.138.242 did respond to ping with an RTT of 197ms, but not to http://91.208.138.242 on 11/18/2022. 

 institutions in Ukraine
2333 destroy

Therefore we continued to monitor the IP address.

Looking at https://www.unesco.org/en/ukraine-war/damages-and-victims#educational-institutions we note that as of 11/18/2022: "Damage to Ukraine learning Institutions damaged by bombing and shelling amounted to 2739 suffering with 2406 damaged and 333 destroyed."n

Other references:

Ukraine struggles with Internet blackout after Russian invasion, Feb 25

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Is Already Taking Down the Internet, Feb 24

https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/24/russia-ukraine/

Ukranian Internet Exchange traffic

Map of the current state of the Russian attack, from the Washington Post

Russo Ukrainian War, Wikipedia

Ukraine Nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Enerhodar

Ukraine maps: Ceasefire allows people to leave cities,

Other relevant items

According to https://hostmaster.ua/news/?pr20220226 "As of 2/.26/2022 the .UA domain registry company "Hostmeister" has transferred to European countries servers that ensure the operability of the .UA domain. Previously, the servers were located in Kiev."

Mariupol State University's web site  (http://en.mdu.in.ua/) has an RTT from SLAC of  around 72ms suggesting it is in the US

The Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (www.lnu.edu.ua) has an RTT from SLAC of around 161ms and appears to be served by edivirt1803.your-server.de where .de is the TLD for Germany.

A Wednesday morning (Feb 2, 2022) strike on the Kharkiv National University left the building engulfed by fire according to Ukraine's State Emergency Services and videos geolocated by CNN.

3/3/2022: The largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Enerhodarnuclear, was under attack by Russian forces who are being blocked by Ukraine citizens. CNN reports that the plant has been shelled and is on fire.

Parallel:

• On Sept 1, 1939 Germany (population 80M) invaded Poland (population 35M), Britain and France, standing by their guarantee of Poland's border, declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. On Sept 17, 1939 the USSR (population 170.5M) also invaded Poland (population 35M). Poland fell on October 6, 1939, 33 days after the German invasion. 
• On 24 February 2022 Russia (population 144M) invaded Ukraine (population 41.6M). So far, the Ukrainians have not given in. No other country (e.g. Belarus, US, NATO) has joined in. 
  • https://www.theglobalist.com/will-ukraine-be-a-replay-of-poland-in-1939/
  • https://nypost.com/2022/03/09/photos-how-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-compares-to-world-war-ii/#10

Footnotes

¹  For some time www.lgunix.edu.ua had an abnormally low RTT of 153ms. The next lowest is www.vnu.edu.ua  with an ~ 17ms larger RTT. According to https://ipgeolocation.io/ip-location/www.luguniv.edu.ua the address 85.25.203.193 on 1/4/2023 was located  Strasbourg, France. More information can be found at http://luguniv.edu.ua/?page_id=31&lang=en

²According to Wikipedia, Kherson was under Russian control since early March 2022. It was returned to Ukraine control Nov 3, 2022 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kherson)

³The Zaporizhzhia site is of interest due to its proximity to the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant about 40 miles SW of the Zaporizhzhia National University. On 4 March 2022, as reported by Wikipedia, the nuclear power plant was captured by Russian forces during the battle of Zaporizhzhia of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the monitoring did not start until Mar 6 after the Russian forces' attack.