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The PingER Project: Measuring the Digital Divide

PingER

Presented by Les Cottrell, SLACAt the SIS Show Palexpo/Geneva December 2003

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History of the PingER Project

• Early 1990’s: SLAC begins pinging nodes around the world to evaluate the quality of Internet connectivity between SLAC and other HEP Institutions.

• Around 1996: The PingER project was funded making it the first Internet end-to-end monitoring tool available to the HEP community.

• Today: Believed to be the most extensive Internet end-to-end performance monitoring tool in the world

PingER

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PingER Today• Today, the PingER Project includes 35 Monitoring-

hosts in 12 countries. They are monitoring Remote-hosts in 80 countries.

PingER

• THESE COUNTRIES COVER 75% OF THE WORLD POPULATION AND 99% OF THE INTERNET CONNECTED POPULATION!!!

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Methodology

Internet11 ping request packets each 30 mins

RemoteHost(typicallya server)

Monitoring host

>ping remhost

Ping response packets

Measure Round Trip Time & Loss

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PingER Architecture

There are three types of hosts

• Remote-hosts: hosts being

monitored

REMOTE

REMOTEREMOTE

REMOTE

REMOTE

REMOTEREMOTE

REMOTE

PingER

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PingER Architecture

There are three types of hosts

• Remote-hosts: hosts being

monitored• Monitoring-hosts: make ping

measurements to remote hosts

Monitoring

Monitoring Monitoring

Monitoring

REMOTE

REMOTEREMOTE

REMOTE

REMOTE

REMOTEREMOTE

REMOTE

PingER

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PingER Architecture

There are three types of hosts

• Remote-hosts: hosts being

monitored• Monitoring-hosts: Make ping

measurements to remote hosts

• Archive/Analysis- hosts: gather data from

Monitoring-sites, analyze & make reports

Archive

Archive

Monitoring

Monitoring Monitoring

Monitoring

REMOTE

REMOTEREMOTE

REMOTE

REMOTE

REMOTEREMOTE

REMOTE

PingER

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• Performance is improving

• Developed world improving factor of 10 in 4-5 years

• S.E. Europe, Russia, catching up

• India & Africa worse off & falling behind

• Developing world 3-10 years behind

Worldwide performance

• Many institutes in developing world have less performance than a household in N. America or Europe

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Current State – Aug ‘03 (throughput Mbps)

• Within region performance better– E.g. Ca|EDU|GOV-NA, Hu-SE Eu, Eu-Eu, Jp-E Asia, Au-Au, Ru-Ru|

Baltics• Africa, Caucasus, Central & S. Asia all bad

Bad < 200kbits/s < DSL Poor > 200 < 500kbits/s

Acceptable > 500kbits/s, < 1000kbits/s

Good > 1000kbits/s

Monitoring Country

Rem

ote

regi

ons

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Loss Comparisons with Development (UNDP)

Positive correlation with Human Development or GDP

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Network Readiness Index vs Throughput

• NRI from Center for International Development, Harvard U. http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cr/pdf/gitrr2002_ch02.pdf

• NRI correlates reasonably well with Network Readiness

Internet for all focusA

&R

focus

NRI Top 14Finland 5.92US 5.79Singapore 5.74Sweden 5.58Iceland 5.51Canada 5.44UK 5.35Denmark 5.33Taiwan 5.31Germany 5.29Netherlands 5.28Israel 5.22Switzerland 5.18Korea 5.10

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Typical uses• Troubleshooting

Discerning if a reported problem is network related Identify the time a problem started Provide quantitative analysis for Network

specialists Identifying step functions, periodic network

behavior, and recognize problems affecting multiple sites.

Setting expectations Identifying need to upgrade

Providing quantitative information to Policy makers & Funding agencies

Seeing the effects of upgradesPingER

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In SummaryPingER provides ongoing support for monitoring and

maintaining the quality of Internet connectivity for the world wide scientific community.

Information is available publicly on the webwww-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/pingtable.pl

PingER also quantifies the extent of the “Digital Divide” and provides information to policy makers and funding agencies.

PingER

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For More Information• We need contacts in developing countries

– (send email to iepm-l@slac.stanford.edu)

• PingER:

– www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/• eJDS

– www.ejds.org/• ICFA/SCIC Network Monitoring report, Jan03

– www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/icfa/icfa-net-paper-dec02

• Monitoring the Digital Divide, CHEP03 paper

– http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0305/0305016.pdf• The PingER Project: Active Internet Performance Monitoring for

the HENP Community, IEEE Communications Magazine on Network Traffic Measurements and Experiments.

PingER