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Experiences with hosting content for Africa (IP Transit, routing, etc.)
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Experiences with hosting content for Africa (IP Transit, routing, etc.)

I'm working with a NGO that operates in Africa using African WiFi or 3G/4G to access diagnostic data for healthcare. I ran some traceroutes from some looking glasses and it seems if you want pan Africa coverage (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique, Ghana, Nigeria, Angola, DRC, etc.) your better off hosting it in Europe where African carriers IP transit is sourced from (Mostly Marseille/Paris/London in Europe). I also learned that there's no local peering in Africa and it goes to Europe and back with the exception of South Africa where the local carriers have a IX (internet exchange). Am I right in this regard? The majority of African coastal countries have fibre to Europe (with the exception of Eritrea) and the inland ones have fibre to the coast OR O3b/SES New Skies low earth orbit satellite.

Comments

  • JioJio Member
    edited November 2020

    hello fellow NGO person!

    yes, this is largely correct. south africa I want to say may have better connectivity than most, but the others will probably hit london/paris/frankfurt or similar. i'd probably put nigeria as #2 or #3 after SA. the rest are very hit or miss or all backhauled.

    eritrea has a single isp that is satellite linked, I'm not sure how you are going to deal with that one, there is basically no land fibre

    we write our applications heavily client sided, everything is saved client sided, and then it syncs whenever possible. unsure how real time you need your things, but it makes it a lot more tolerable to use day to day

  • Might Starlink be a feasible option in the near future?

  • @user123 CEO Elon Musk declared via his Twitter page that a public beta would launch "very soon," targeting people in higher latitudes "like Seattle." Seems it will be awhile for africa coverage.

    Thanked by 1user123
  • yoursunnyyoursunny Member, IPv6 Advocate

    @Unbelievable said:
    @user123 CEO Elon Musk declared via his Twitter page that a public beta would launch "very soon," targeting people in higher latitudes "like Seattle." Seems it will be awhile for africa coverage.

    https://yoursunny-summer-host.cf has been using Tesla/SpaceX Starlink from the Antarctica location. Latency is lower than satellites, but bandwidth is limited.

  • nature1nature1 Member
    edited November 2020

    Also doing more research Africa's fibre network is more developed than I thought. Liquid Telecom has terresterial fibre now all the way from Cape Town, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt enhancing redundancy and route diversity.

    https://liquidtelecom.com/about-us/our_network

  • yoursunnyyoursunny Member, IPv6 Advocate

    A major mobile operator in Algeria told me that there is only one fiber going to the southern part of their country. Intermediate stations are solar powered, and would stop working at night. There's no Internet or mobile phone at night.

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