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 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 Mar 22, 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
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 are no longer responding to pings: The National University of Shipbuilding, Mykolaiv (last responded early morning Mar 21, 2022 GMT), Chernihiv National University of Technology (last responded early morning of Mar 21, 2022), Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology (last responded Mar 23, 22:00 GMT),
I also note that all the web servers (except ns.kiev.ua, plus as of 3/11/2022 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
City | Site | Latitude | Longitude | URL |
Luhansk | Taras Shevchenko National University | 49.28157 | 38.90258 | www.luguniv.edu.ua1 |
Donetsk | Donetsk National Medical University | 48.0027 | 37.8278 | www.dnmu.com.ua |
Mariupol | Mariupol State University | 47.1021 | 37.52356 | en.mdu.in.ua |
Zaporizhzhia3 | Zaporizhia National University | 47.819 | 35.1811 | www.znu.edu.ua |
Dnipro | Dnipro State Medical University | 48.46111 | 35.0544 | www.dpsmu.com |
Kharkiv | 50.0867 | 36.2522 | mail.kipt.kharkov.ua | |
Kharkiv | Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics | 50.0139 | 36.22216 | www.hneu.edu.ua |
Sumy | Sumy National Agrarian University | 50.8817 | 34.7756 | snau.edu.ua |
Chernihiv | Chernihiv National University of Technology | 51.5051 | 31.33316 | www.chnpu.edu.ua |
Odessa | I. I. Michnikov National University | 46.4875 | 30.729 | www.onu.edu.ua |
Kherson2 | Kherson National Technical University | 46.66879 | 32.6354 | |
Kherson2 | Kherson State Agricultural University | 46.6425 | 32.5821 | www.ksau.kherson.ua |
Mykolaiv | National University of Shipbuilding | 46.9871 | 31.9836 | www.nuos-international.com.ua |
Kyiv | Institute of Mathematics of NAS of Ukraine | 50.4443 | 30.5142 | www.imath.kiev.ua |
Kyiv | Ukranian Internet Exchange | 50.4359 | 30.4981 | ix.net.ua |
Kyiv | Kyiv Navigator | 50.4359 | 30.498 | ns.kiev.ua |
Kyiv | Saint Michael's Monastery, Kyiv, | 50.4558 | 30.5208 | www.archangel.kiev.ua |
Kyiv | Voice of Ukraine | 50.4558 | 30.5055 | www.golos.com.ua |
Kyiv | Kyiv Academic University | 50.4667 | 30.3608 | www.kau.org.ua |
Kyiv | Hostmaster | 50.4557 | 30.49 | www.hostmaster.ua |
Vinnytsia | Vinnytsia National Technical University | 49.23388 | 28.41116 | www.vntu.edu.ua |
Zhytomyr | Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University | 50.24917 | 28.6718 | www.zu.edu.ua |
Ternopil | Western Ukrainian National University | 49.5537 | 25.55945 | www.wunu.edu.ua |
Lutsk | Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University | 50.7470 | 25.3288 | www.vnu.edu.ua |
Lviv | Lviv State University of Physical Culture | 49.84115 | 24.0205 | www.ldufk.edu.ua |
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.
Map of monitored sites
Using https://batchgeo.com/ and above table to derive https://batchgeo.com/map/35fa28f945e34b7bb6a0652871cebf34 (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 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:
Proximity Description | Value |
Fallen & occupied by Russian forces | 4 |
Surrounded by Russian forces | 3 |
Partially surrounded by Russian forces | 2 |
Russian forces nearby | 1 |
Russian forces not nearby | 0 |
We then plot the IPDV and proximity for each Ukrainian host monitored and look at the correlation between the IPDV and proximity
IPDV and Proximity for the Ukrainian hosts | Correlation between IPDV and Proximity of Russian forces |
---|---|
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,
Time series for monitored sites
The times in the plots below are GMT. You can click on the graphs to increase their size.
mail.kipt.kharkov.ua (Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, Kharkiv, latitude & longitude 50.0867 36.2522)
Monitored from SLAC
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)
snau.edu.ua (Sumy National Agrarian University, Sumy, latitude Longitude, latitude longitude 50.8817 34.7758)
www.chnpu.edu.ua (Chernihiv National University of Technology, latitude longitude 51.5051 31.33316)
www.onu.edu.ua (Odessa I. I. Michnikov National University, latitude longitude 46.4875 30.7290)
en.mdu.in.ua (Mariupol State University, Mariupol, latitude longitude 47.1021 37.52356)
www.znu.edu.ua3 (Zaporizhia National University, Zaporizhia, latitude & longitude 47.189 35.1811)
www.dpsmu.com (Dnipro State Medical University, Dnipro, latitude and longitude 48.46111 35.0544
www.kntu.net.ua2 (Kherson National Technical University, Kherson, latitude & longitude 46.66879 32.6354)
www.ksau.kherson.ua2 (Kherson State Agricultural University, Kherson, latitude & longitude 46.6425 32.5821)
www.nuos-international.com.ua (National University of Shipbuilding, Mykolaiv, latitude & longitude 46.9871, 31.9836)
www.imath.kiev.us (Institute of Mathematics of NAS of Ukraine, Kyiv, latitude longitude = 50.443 30.5142
ix.net.ua(Ukranian Internet Exchange, Kyiv, latitude & longitude 50.4359 30.4981)
ns.kiev.ua (Kyiv Navigator, Kyiv, latitude & longitude 50.4359 30.4981)
www.hostmaster.ua (Hostmaster, Kyiv latitude and longitude 50.4557 30.4900)
www.archangel.kiev.ua (Saint Michael's Monastery, Kyiv, latitude & longitude 50.4558 30.5208)
www.golos.com.ua (Voice of Ukraine, Kyiv, latitude longitude = 50.4558 30.5055)
www.kau.org.ua (Kyiv Academic University, Kyiv, latitude longitude = 50.4667 30.3608)
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)
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, is 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.
- 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.
Footnotes
1www.lgunix.edu.ua has 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 it is located in Strasbourg France.
2According to Wikipedia, Kherson has been under Russian control since early March 2022.
3The Zaporizhzhia site is of particular 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