Challenges of Southern Africa Europe connectivity

Transcription

1 Challenges of Southern Africa Europe connectivity Presentation at the Géant2 Launch Luxembourg, 15 June 2005 Neville Arendse Dept of Science and Technology South Africa Duncan Martin Tertiary Education Network South Africa

2 What s meant by Research and Education Networking? In the developed world: ensuring that advanced networking traffic is not disabled by congestion from commodity-type traffic developing next-generation networking and applications in research and higher education. In Africa, south of the Sahara: securing affordable Internet access; special holy cow deals for research and education institutions; relaxed VSAT license conditions enabling participation in collaborative international research projects. 2

3 The University of Witwatersrand 11.3 Mb/s Internet access Cost breakdown Appox. unit cost ( per kb/s per month) 3.00 Carrier transit cost in UK and USA 7 % Long haul to UK and USA (via SAT-3 cable) cost 63 % Transport and peering within South Africa 30 % 3

4 Challenge 1 Long-haul connectivity Long-haul connectivity to the Internet in Europe and the USA. is very expensive (notwithstanding the remarkable, customerspecific deal TELKOM SA gives TENET institutions) ; and the full cost has to be borne by the Africans. Club ownership model of SAT-3 cable No-one to talk to (other than your incumbent) 4

5 Challenge 2 Terrestrial infrastructure Terrestrial communications services in South Africa are very expensive (notwithstanding the customer-specific deal TELKOM SA gives TENET institutions) ; and Wireless solutions (e.g. iburst) becoming available in metropolitan areas Outside South Africa Optical fibre infrastructure is sparse, but evolving. Many campuses dependent on VSAT services 5

6 Challenge 3 Market structure in SA Utterly dominant incumbent (TELKOM SA) Privatised 7 years ago Aggressive player in all markets Deregulation underway, but ineffective so far Four 1 st Tier ISPs (one being TELKOM SA) Own transit agreements with major carriers in UK and USA; BUT. must buy basic services from TELKOM SA; High local connection costs: 80% of total Internet access cost for consumers is the local connection charge nd tier resellers 6

7 The University of Swaziland 192 kb/s Internet access Cost breakdown Appox. unit cost ( per kb/s per month) 9.00 Carrier transit in UK 2.5 % Long haul to UK (via SAT-3 cable) 21.0 % Transport and peering within South Africa 10.0 % Trans-border link: S African half-circuit 25.0 % Swazi half-circuit and access circuit 41.5 % 7

8 Challenge 4 Punitive trans-border tariffs For the University of Swaziland 2 / 3 of Internet access cost is trans-border circuit Internet access is 3 times as expensive as in SA TELKOM SA has offered to match any reduction in halfcircuit charges made by Swazi counterpart Punitive trans-border charges are the norm More expensive to peer locally than in London or New York Stifling development of regional networking 8

9 SAT-3/WASC/SAFE / / SAFE SAT-3/WASC Landing Points 1. Portugal 2. Spain (Canaries Islands) 3. Senegal 4. Côte d Ivoire 5. Ghana 6. Benin 7. Nigeria 8. Cameroon 9. Gabon 10. Angola 11. South Africa SAFE Landing Points 12. South Africa 13. France (Reunion) 14. Mauritius 15. India 16. Malaysia 9

10 Cable connectivity to and from South Africa Layer 2 pipes via SAT-3 / WASC (West Coast) and London Amsterdam New York, NY Ashburn, VA Latencies low compared to satellite links London: 165 New York: 220 Stanford: 330 (ms) Second pipe via SAFE cable Westwards around the World from New York Routinely used for inbound traffic to TELKOM s ADSL network EASSy cable coming in

11 The Géant Connection (1) Established in Oct 2004 GRE tunnel through TELKOM SA s IP network between Géant s London PoP; and TENET s International Gateway in Cape Town Provisional in that it shares long-haul bandwidth with general Internet traffic; It will ultimately be superseded by dedicated link Traffic flow is small, but growing fast Great feel good impact on research community THANKS to EC, Dante, TELKOM 11

12 The Géant Connection (2) South African National Research Network (SANReN) SA Government (DST) is creating SANReN Has contracted TENET s assistance Meet connectivity needs of big e-science projects Astronomy, VLBI, High Energy Physics, Bioinformatics, Medical Science New Centre for High Performance Computing Inter-connection with TENET network Connectable institutions in other countries welcome Will support IPv6 EC very supportive Targets In place by year-end Dedicated connection via SAT-3 to Géant (initially, 1 Gb/s) 12

13 Challenge 5 Getting organised Collaborative procurement approaches Strong agency model (e.g. TENET) Making friends with the Telco s Regional structures across national boundaries Lobbying at all levels How to make friends with and/or influence the SAT-3 Owners Club? EASSy Club? How to beat the trans-border tariffs? Public-Private partnerships IEEAF (Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation) 13

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