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South Asia as compared to the rest of the world regions
From SLAC 
Normalized TCP Throughput (ii) Packet Loss (iiiii) Min RTT to World Regions
(iii) Unreachability (iv) Jitter
The left hand most figure shows the yearly average derived TCP throughput (see below for a definition of the derived TCP throughput) normalized by the minimum RTT for the region (to reduce the proximity effects). It is seen that the throughputs typically change in steps as major changes are made in the routing and circuits.
The left hand middle figure shows the packet loss to various regions of the world as seen from N. America. Since losses are fairly distance independent no attempt has been made to normalize the data. It is seen that the world divides up into two major super-regions: N. America, Europe, E. Asia and Oceania with losses below 0.1%, and Latin America, C. Asia, Russia, S.E. Asia, S. Asia and Africa with losses > 0.1% and as high as as a few per-cent. All countries are improving exponentially, but Africa is falling further behind most regions.
The right hand left middle figure shows the drop in the Minimum RTT from 2002-2006. The large step for S. Asia in 2003 was due to the change over from satellite to fibre. as the result of gradual shift from Satellite to fiber. Central Asia (also Afghanistan) has hardly moved in its minimum RTT since it continues to use geostationary satellites.
The right hand most middle graph shows the unreachability of world regions seen from the US. A host is deemed unreachable if all pings of a set fail to respond. It shows the fragility of the links and is mainly distance independent (the reasons for fragility are usually in the last mile, the end site or host). Again the developed regions US and Canada, E. Asia, and Oceania have the lowest unreachability (< 0.3%) whil the other regions have unreachability from 0.7% to 2%, and again Africa is not improving, with S. Asia having the second worst unreachability.
TCP throughput from CERN & SLAC to World Regions
The graphs above show the derived TCP throughput using the Mathis formula. The macroscopic behavior of the TCP congestion avoidance algorithmby Mathis, Semke, Mahdavi & Ott in Computer Communication Review, 27(3), July 1997, provides a short and useful formula for the upper bound on the transfer rate:
Rate <= (MSS/RTT)*(1 / sqrt(p))
where:
Rate: is the TCP transfer rate or throughputd
MSS: is the maximum segment size (fixed for each Internet path, typically 1460 bytes)
RTT: is the round trip time (as measured by TCP)
p: is the packet loss rate.
In eth graphs the data points (average throughput per month) are fitted to exponential functions and for simplicity the trend lines only are shown. These lines enable us to see that Rusia and Latin America are 6 years behind Europe, the Mid-East and SE Asia are 7 years behind, and S. Asia, C. Asia and Africa are 10 years or more behind. What is even more concerning is that Africa In particular), South and Central Asia are not catching up.
Min RTT and Packet Loss of South Asian Countries
The minimum RTTs (seen in the left hand map below from CERN/Geneva Switzerland) are acceptable for India and Pakistan. For Afghanistan they are large (dreadful or over 500ms) since the connections are via geostationary satellite(s). The routing (see above) for Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan is non-optimal so the RTTs are poor or very poor.
The right hand map shows the packet losses. These are more distance independent than RTTs. Once again it is seen that India, Pakistan, Sri lanka and the Maldives have acceptable losses (< 2.5%). while Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal have poor to very poor losses
Throughput Time Series for S. Asia from SLAC
Below are seen time series of the daily averaged derived TCP throughputs (in kbits/s) to S. Asia from SLAC. It can be seen that there are large fluctuations. These fluctuations are a characteristic of congested lines (typically the last mile). At weekends when people are not at work, there is less congestion and better throughput. It is also seen that the countries divide into two. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives have better throughput 400-1200 kbits/s compared to Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan with between 75 and 400 kbits/s.
International Bandwidth
Left hand figure from UNDP http://www.apdip.net/projects/dig-rev/info/ middle & right hand figure from Asia Internet Usage and Population Stats. Note that we believe that http://www.apdip.net/projects/dig-rev/info/ figures are 2005/2006 at the latest (there is evidence that many ofthe figures are for 2001-2002 or earlier), while Asia Internet Usage and Population Stats are 2007. This is very important since the growth in Internet users from 2000-2007 was 700% for India and 8,862% for Pakistan. There is also information at http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php but the date for the Internet users per capita appears to be 2004, and the users/capita looks wrong by a factor of 1000.
South Asian Internet User Statistics
Note: The y-scale is Logarithmic. India has ~3000 times the population of the Maldives
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
It can be seen that India has the largest population, but the growth in Internet users from 2000-2007 is maximum for Pakistan (8861%). India has the maximum Internet users about 40 million, which is only (3.65 %) of the population. Pakistan has about 12 million Internet users with a population penetration of 7.23 %
Average and Min RTT from SLAC to South Asian Countries
Shown here for February 2007, are the average and minimum RTTs per site (the dots), and the aggregate values of average and minimum RTTs for each S. Asian country as seen from SLAC. The dots show the dispersion in the values for a country as well as the number of sites for each country. It is seen that Afghanistan is the worst off (largest values) country in RTT as might be expected since it is using geostationary satellite links. This is followed by Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The best country is India closely followed by the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
MOS for various regions seen from US
The telecommunications industry uses the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) as a voice quality metric. The values of the MOS are: 1= bad; 2=poor; 3=fair; 4=good; 5=excellent. A typical range for Voice over IP is 3.5 to 4.2 (see VoIPtroubleshooter.com). In reality, even a perfect connection is impacted by the compression algorithms of the codec, so the highest score most codecs can achieve is in the 4.2 to 4.4 range.
There are three factors that significantly impact call quality: latency, packet loss, and jitter. We calculate the jitter using the Inter Packet Delay Variability (IPDV) , see the http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/tutorial.html#mosTutorial. The jitter defined via IPDV is shown below. the Jitter is realtively distance independent, it measures congestion, has little impact on the Web and email. It decides the length of VoIP codec buffers and impacts streaming. We see the usual division into dveloped verus developing regions.
Most tool-based solutions calculate what is called an "R" value and then apply a formula to convert that to an MOS score. Then the R to MOS calculation is relatively standard. The R value score is from 0 to 100, where a higher number is better. To convert latency, loss, and jitter to MOS we follow Nessoft's method. The graph below shows the Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (using EWMI i = alpha * EWMI i-1 + (1 - alpha) * Obs i where alpha = 0.7 and EWMI 1 = Obs 1).
The right hand graph shows the jitter or variability of world regions seen from the US. The jitter is defined as the Inter Quartile Range (IQR) of the Inter Packet Delay Variability (IPDV i = RTT i - RTT i-1) . The Jitter is relatively distance independent, it measures congestion, and has little impact on the Web and email. It decides the length of VoIP codec buffers and impacts streaming. We see the usual division into dveloped verus developing regions.
MOS for various regions seen from US
The telecommunications industry uses the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) as a voice quality metric. The values of the MOS are: 1= bad; 2=poor; 3=fair; 4=good; 5=excellent. A typical range for Voice over IP is 3.5 to 4.2 (see VoIPtroubleshooter.com). In reality, even a perfect connection is impacted by the compression algorithms of the codec, so the highest score most codecs can achieve is in the 4.2 to 4.4 range.
There are three factors that significantly impact call quality: latency, packet loss, and jitter. We calculate the jitter using the Inter Packet Delay Variability (IPDV) , see the http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/tutorial.html#mosTutorial.
Most tool-based solutions calculate what is called an "R" value and then apply a formula to convert that to an MOS score. Then the R to MOS calculation is relatively standard. The R value score is from 0 to 100, where a higher number is better. To convert latency, loss, and jitter to MOS we follow Nessoft's method. The graph below shows the Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (using EWMI i = alpha * EWMI i-1 + (1 - alpha) * Obs i where alpha = 0.7 and EWMI 1 = Obs 1).
It can be seen from the above plot that VoIP ought to be successful between SLAC and the US, Europe, E. Asia, Russia and the Mid East (all above MOS = 3.5). S. E. Asia is marginal, S. Asia people will have to be very tolerant of one another, and C. Asia and Africa are pretty much out of the question in general. It is also seen that the Balkans, Russia and Latin America improved dramatically in 2000-2001. Much of latin America and Russia moved from satellite to land lines in this period.
TCP throughput from CERN & SLAC to World Regions
The graphs above show the derived TCP throughput using the Mathis formula. The macroscopic behavior of the TCP congestion avoidance algorithmby Mathis, Semke, Mahdavi & Ott in Computer Communication Review, 27(3), July 1997, provides a short and useful formula for the upper bound on the transfer rate:
Rate <= (MSS/RTT)*(1 / sqrt(p))
where:
Rate: is the TCP transfer rate or throughputd
MSS: is the maximum segment size (fixed for each Internet path, typically 1460 bytes)
RTT: is the round trip time (as measured by TCP)
p: is the packet loss rate.
In the left hand tow graphs the data points (average throughput per month) are fitted to exponential functions and for simplicity the trend lines only are shown. These lines enable us to see that Rusia and Latin America are 6 years behind Europe, the Mid-East and SE Asia are 7 years behind, and S. Asia, C. Asia and Africa are 10 years or more behind. What is even more concerning is that Africa In particular), South and Central Asia are not catching up.
The right hand most figure shows the yearly average derived TCP throughput normalized by the minimum RTT for the region (to reduce the proximity effects). It is seen that the throughputs are not simply exponential straigh lines, but typically change in steps as major changes are made in the routing and circuits.
Min RTT and Packet Loss of South Asian Countries
The minimum RTTs (seen in the left hand map below from CERN/Geneva Switzerland) are acceptable for India and Pakistan. For Afghanistan they are large (dreadful or over 500ms) since the connections are via geostationary satellite(s). The routing (see above) for Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan is non-optimal so the RTTs are poor or very poor.
The right hand map shows the packet losses. These are more distance independent than RTTs. Once again it is seen that India, Pakistan, Sri lanka and the Maldives have acceptable losses (< 2.5%). while Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal have poor to very poor losses
Throughput Time Series for S. Asia from SLAC
Below are seen time series of the daily averaged derived TCP throughputs (in kbits/s) to S. Asia from SLAC. It can be seen that there are large fluctuations. These fluctuations are a characteristic of congested lines (typically the last mile). At weekends when people are not at work, there is less congestion and better throughput. It is also seen that the countries divide into two. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives have better throughput 400-1200 kbits/s compared to Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan with between 75 and 400 kbits/s.
International Bandwidth
Left hand figure from UNDP http://www.apdip.net/projects/dig-rev/info/ middle & right hand figure from Asia Internet Usage and Population Stats. Note that we believe that http://www.apdip.net/projects/dig-rev/info/ figures are 2005/2006 at the latest (there is evidence that many ofthe figures are for 2001-2002 or earlier), while Asia Internet Usage and Population Stats are 2007. This is very important since the growth in Internet users from 2000-2007 was 700% for India and 8,862% for Pakistan. There is also information at http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php but the date for the Internet users per capita appears to be 2004, and the users/capita looks wrong by a factor of 1000.
South Asian Internet User Statistics
Note: The y-scale is Logarithmic. India has ~3000 times the population of the Maldives
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
It can be seen that India has the largest population, but the growth in Internet users from 2000-2007 is maximum for Pakistan (8861%). India has the maximum Internet users about 40 million, which is only (3.65 %) of the population. Pakistan has about 12 million Internet users with a population penetration of 7.23 %
Average and Min RTT from SLAC to South Asian Countries
Shown here for February 2007, are the average and minimum RTTs per site (the dots), and the aggregate values of average and minimum RTTs for each S. Asian country as seen from SLAC. The dots show the dispersion in the values for a country as well as the number of sites for each country. It is seen that Afghanistan is the worst off (largest values) country in RTT as might be expected since it is using geostationary satellite links. This is followed by Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The best country is India closely followed by the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka
It can be seen from the above plot that VoIP ought to be successful between SLAC and the US, Europe, E. Asia, Russia and the Mid East (all above MOS = 3.5). S. E. Asia is marginal, S. Asia people will have to be very tolerant of one another, and C. Asia and Africa are pretty much out of the question in general. It is also seen that the Balkans, Russia and Latin America improved dramatically in 2000-2001. Much of latin America and Russia moved from satellite to land lines in this period.
Afghanistan
PingER has three three sites in Afghanistan that are monititored and they were quite hard to get. For example the Kabul University host is a firewall that does not have stable power and so is usually turned off at night. Also these sites have minimum RTTs greater than 700 ms which indicates that they are all on satellite. The Kabul host is connected via the Silk Roadsatellite that passes through DESY, Germany. The other two are connected via Telia a European ISP. On March 10, 2003, Afghanistan went live on the Web which was previous banned under the Taliban rule. The Internet infrastructure in Afghanistan is immature and the pricing for internet is quite high.
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