[nycbug-talk] Africa Network Traffic

[Alex Pilosov]

On Fri, 5 Oct 2007, Isaac Levy wrote:

> >> Where to start?  I'm drawing a blank on this...
> > What is the internet?
> 
> Right :)
To clarify, if you missed the point. You started with a very vague
question. You need to define each word in the "how much of the internet's
CONTENT originates in Affica, West Africa, or even Ghana", and then you'll
realize how complex (or simple, depending on definition) your problem is.

Now, 

a) word "internet": To paraphrase someone, "Internet is a set of networks
interconnected via IP in such a way that each network can reach every
other one". That means, there's no single source for your data, and
problem is impossible to solve in general. The best you can hope for is
"how much traffic passes through level3 and mci backbones with IPs that
are in africa (see below)". No, you may not assume that ghana traffic 
transiting (3) has same ratio as ghana traffic transiting Telkom SA or 
China Netcom.

b) word "content":  What is content? Are any bits flowing into one
direction 'content'? Is it only port 80? What about bittorrent being
served out of africa?

c) word "originates" - Do you mean IP wise? What if content is served in
ghana locally, are you interested? What if content is cached in ghana
locally from cnn.com and served locally?

d) word "ghana" - If IP is registered to ghana company (ie mailing
address in ghana) but actually routed from SA, is it still ghana? 

-alex