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More information can be found at http://nsrc.org/ASIA/LK/17-Oct-2006_Sri-Lanka-Internet-Status.pdf
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Comparisons with "Development" Indices
Comparison of TCP Throughput with UNDP Human Development Index
The UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) is composed of 3 factors defining the development of a country. They are:
- A Long and healthy life, as measured by expectancy at birth.
- Knowledge, as measured by the adult literacy rate (with 2/3 weight) and the combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratios (with 1/3 weight).
- A decent standard of living, as measured by GDP per capita.
On the scatter plot the S. Asian countries are indicated by orange diamonds.
The figure above shows a scatter plot of the HDI versus the PingER Derived Throughput for July 2006. Each point is colored according to the country's region. A logarithmic fit is also shown. Logarithmic is probably appropriate since Internet performance is increasing exponentially in time and the differences between the countries can be related to number of years they are behind the developing countries, while human development is more linear. Since the PingER Derived TCP Throughput is linearly proportional to RTT, countries close to the U.S. (i.e. the U.S., Canada and Central America) may be expected to have elevated throughputs compared to their HDI. We thus do not plot or use these countries in the correlation fit between HDI and throughput. It is seen that there is a strong correlation (R2 > 0.6) between the HDI and throughput. As expected countries in Africa generally occupy the lower values in x and y, and European countries together with Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan occupy the higher values of x and y.
The Derived TCP is non-subjective and quicker and easier to update than the HDI.
Comparison of TCP Throughput with Technology Access Index
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) introduced the Technology Achievement Index (TAI) to reflect a country's capacity to participate in the technological innovations of the network age. The TAI aims to capture how well a country is creating and diffusing technology and building a human skill base. It includes the following dimensions: Creation of technology (e.g. patents, royalty receipts); diffusion of recent innovations (Internet hosts/capita, high & medium tech exports as share of all exports); Diffusion of old innovations (log phones/capita, log of electric consumption/capita); Human skills (mean years of schooling, gross enrollment in tertiary level in science, math & engineering). the Figure below shows December 2003's derived throughput measured from the U.S. vs. the TAI. The correlation is seen to be positive and medium to good. The US and Canada are excluded since the losses are not accurately measurable by PingER and the RTT is small. Hosts in well connected countries such as Finland, Sweden, Japan also have their losses poorly measured by PingER and since they have long RTTs the derived throughput is likely to be low using the Mathis formula and if no packets are lost then assuming a loss of 0.5 packets in the 14,400 sent to a host in a month.
Comparison of TCP Throughput with Digital Access Index
DAI indicates - Avalibility of Infrastructure - Affordibility of access - Education Level - Quality of ICT services - Internet Usage
Since the PingER Derived Throughput is linearly proportional to RTT, countries close to the U.S. (i.e. the U.S., Canada and Mexico) may be expected to have elevated Derived Throughputs compared to their DAI. We thus do not use the U.S. and Canada and Mexico in the correlation fit.
Most of the European countries lie above 1500 Kb/s throughput and greater than 0.6 DAI. With the exceptions being Malta, Belarus and Ukraine. Balkans is catching up with Europe with
the exception being Albania which is way down.
Most of the East Asian countries lies in the same region with the exception of China. Middle East and Russia are right in the middle way. Two Middle Eastern countries Israel and Cyprus lie in the top cluster with Europe. The other exception in Middle Easwt is Iran which is way down.
The South East Asia can be divided into three catagories with Singapore in the top , Malaysia and Brunai in the middle and Vitenam and Indonesia at the bottom. South Asia forms two clusters one is Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka which are reasonably good and the others Nepal, Bhutan etc which lies in the same catagory as Africa.
Africa and Central Asia mostly lies at the bottom.
Comparison of TCP Throughput with the Network Readiness Index (NRI) 2006-2007
The Network Readiness Index (NRI) comes from the "The Global Information Technology Report 2006-2007" of the World Economic Forum. NRI measures the degree of preparation of a nation or community to participate in and benefit from ICT developments. The NRI is composed of three component indexes which assess:
- environment for ICT offered by a country or community
- readiness of the community's key stakeholders (individuals, business and governments)
- usage of ICT among these stakeholders.
A map of the NRI for the 122 countries of the 2006-2007 NRI are shown in the map below.
It is seen that the developed countries US, Canada, N. Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia, Taiwan have a high NRI (> 5.13, dark green) NRI, followed by S. & E. Europe, New Zealand, Chile, Malaysia, Tunisia, Qatar (NRI > 4.13, light green). The worst off countries (< 3.13, grey) of the countries reported on (countries not reported are in white) are mainly land-locked countries.
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