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Round Trip Times are measurements which are influenced by the distance between the sites. The minimum RTTs for Korea and Japan are within the acceptable range. Measurements for China and Taiwan are still within the acceptable range, however they appear to be moving towards the poor bracket i.e. of greater than 250 ms. \[<span style="color: #990033">This needs to be investigated</span>\] As a consequence of [consistent government policies|http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/1999/0001/07/00017023.PDF] since 1994 and support from [Asian Development Bank|http://www.adb.org/media/Articles/2004/4747_mongolia_connecting_with_information_age/] results for Mongolia have improved significantly however they still lie in the range of poor. This is perhaps because of the poor ratio of users to available capacity. With the implementation of the [ICT Vision 2010|http://www.ony.unu.edu/seminars/2007/iist/04%20-%20Mongolia.ppt] plan particularly the setup of an [Internet Exchange Router|http://www.apng.org/museum/ppt/6apng-mongolia.ppt] in 2005, we observe step improvements (for all parameters) in 2005 and 2006 i.e. in minimum RTTs, packet losses and throughputs.

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The throughput observed by the monitoring node in SLAC is as expected. Japan and Korea appear to be steadily improving (considering the increase in international bandwidth as discussed earlier), though with different rates. Taiwan on the other hand has overtook Japan, which is understandable when we consider the ratio of the available bandwidth per thousand users.Below are the aggregated performance results for the individual sites as seen from SLAC for the year 2007.

Below are the aggregated performance results for the individual sites as seen from SLAC for the year 2007.

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Comparison with Human Development Indices 

Often we see that there is a strong co-relation with TCP throughput and other Human Development indices such as UNDP Human Development Index, UNDP Technology Achievement Index, Network Readiness Index.

The left most figure below shows the correlation between International bandwidth (as discussed earlier) and the normalized derived PingER throughput. It can be seen that the correlation is good (R ²  ~ 0.59). It is also seen that the East Asian countries (highlighted) lie towards the top right where both the throughput and International Bandwidth are high and match with the results of countries known to have good network infrastructures. On the other hand Mongolia is an anomaly. This can be attributed to the relatively low international bandwidth and resources available per user. The loss percentages are quite prominent as well (as discussed earlier). Also, the poor RTTs (due to delays in the last few hops) contribute towards significantly low throughput values.

There are many indicators of countries' development from organizations such as the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations, the CIA, the World Bank try to classify countries by their development. They are quite challenging and require careful consideration of: what can be measured, how useful is it, how well it is defined, how it changes with time, how it changes from country to country, the cost of measuring, the time it takes to gather (to avoid being too out of date, how subjective they are etc.

Typically they are based on some combination of GDP, life expectancy, literacy, education, phone lines, Internet penetration etc. Some examples include the Human Development Index (HDI), the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), the Opportunity Index, the Technology Achievement Index etc. In general agree with one another (R ² ~ 0.8). More information can be found here. For this report we focus on just two, the DOI (since it is recent and covers more countries than most) and the HDI since it different from the others and focuses on the human condition.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) measures countries' ICT capabilities in infrastructure, access path and device, affordability and coverage, and quality. It covers 180 countries, and has recent (data 2005, announced in 2006). There are 11 indicators: that cover mobile telephony coverage, Internet tariffs, #computers, fixed line phones, mobile subscribers, Internet users all in relation to the population of the country. A figure of the correlation with the normalized derived PingER throughput is shown in the figure above. The correlation is fairly good. Again nearly all countries show significantly high values of throughput in comparison to DOI except for the case of Mongolia and China.

"The Human Development Index (HDI) is the measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standard of living for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used to determine and indicate whether a country is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped country and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life." from Wikipedia.

The figure above shows the correlation between the HDI and the normalized derived PingER throughput for the world and East Asian countries, and the PingER throughputs per East Asian country. The correlation is seen to be strong (R ²~ 0.56). It is also seen that except for Mongolia, all East Asian countries feature equally high throughput as compared to the HDI. Also, all conform to the trend maintained by the countries in general. Additionally, a comparison of loss percentage (as seen from the US) to DOI and Purchasing Power Parity (GDP/capita) to Unreachability confirms that nearly all the East Asian countries perform well and perform equal well or better than other leading countries such as Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, France etc.

Conclusions

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There are many indicators of countries' development from organizations such as the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations, the CIA, the World Bank try to classify countries by their development. They are quite challenging and require careful consideration of: what can be measured, how useful is it, how well it is defined, how it changes with time, how it changes from country to country, the cost of measuring, the time it takes to gather (to avoid being too out of date, how subjective they are etc.
Typically they are based on some combination of GDP, life expectancy, literacy, education, phone lines, Internet penetration etc. Some examples include the Human Development Index (HDI), the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), the Opportunity Index, the Technology Achievement Index etc. In general agree with one another (R ² ~ 0.8). More information can be found here. For this report we focus on just two, the DOI (since it is recent and covers more countries than most) and the HDI since it different from the others and focuses on the human condition.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) measures countries' ICT capabilities in infrastructure, access path and device, affordability and coverage, and quality. It covers 180 countries, and has recent (data 2005, announced in 2006). There are 11 indicators: that cover mobile telephony coverage, Internet tariffs, #computers, fixed line phones, mobile subscribers, Internet users all in relation to the population of the country. A figure of the correlation with the normalized derived PingER throughput is shown below. The correlation is fairly good. Again nearly all countries show significantly high values of throughput in comparison to DOI except for the case of Mongolia and China.

"The Human Development Index (HDI) is the measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standard of living for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used to determine and indicate whether a country is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped country and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life." from Wikipedia.

The figure above shows the correlation between the HDI and the normalized derived PingER throughput for the world and East Asian countries, and the PingER throughputs per East Asian country. The correlation is seen to be strong (R ²~ 0.56). It is also seen that except for Mongolia, all East Asian countries feature equally high throughput as compared to the HDI. Also, all conform to the trend maintained by the countries in general. Additionally, a comparison of loss percentage (as seen from the US) to DOI and Purchasing Power Parity (GDP/capita) to Unreachability confirms that nearly all the East Asian countries perform well and perform equal well or better than other leading countries such as Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, France etc.

Below, the figure on the left shows the correlation between International bandwidth (as discussed earlier) and the normalized derived PingER throughput. A good correlation (R ²  ~ 0.59) is observed between the two. It is also seen that the East Asian countries (highlighted) lie towards the top right where both the throughput and International Bandwidth are high and match with the results of countries known to have good network infrastructures. On the other hand Mongolia is an anomaly. This can be attributed to the relatively low international bandwidth and resources available per user. The loss percentages are quite prominent as well (as discussed earlier). Also, the poor RTTs (due to delays in the last few hops) contribute towards significantly low throughput values.

Conclusions

(The conclusions may not be in the order of importance) 

• Except for Mongolia - which shows average results - all East Asian countries show good (or acceptable) Internet performance. The trends show that these results are continuing to improve.
  • Results as seen internationally are strongly influenced by the condition of the network within the country.
    • This was confirmed by the step changes seen in performance in 2005/2006 when an Internet Exchange Router was setup connecting the ISPs of Mongolia.

• • • Nearly all results are skewed by the performance observed for the last few hops.
• Improvements (/changes) in the national backbones - as in the case of Mongolia in 2005 - result in step changes in Internet performance.
• Internet performance is closely tied with Human Development Indices - HDI.
  • This is evident from the strong correlation of these parameters with Internet performance metrics as observed by PingER. In the case of East Asia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan show good Internet performance results while maintaining high values for HDI. On the other hand, Mongolia shows average (and in some cases below average) Internet performance statistics while maintaining average HDI values.
• Increase in PingER coverage results in accurate results. This is observed by the increased correlation of PingER results with Human Development Indices over the years 2006 and 2007.