How the Internet Works

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How the Internet Works

Kyle Spencer, June 2014

Director, Uganda Internet eXchange Point

Technology for Development Specialist, UNICEF

E-mail: [email protected]

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Agenda

This talk will take approximately one hour to complete:

1. Preface

2. How does the Internet work?

3. Internet economics and market dynamics 4. What’s holding Africa back?

5. What’s the solution?

6. Conclusions and discussion

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Preface

● Purpose of this talk

○ To introduce the Internet ecosystem and to bring everyone up to speed on current Internet development issues

● The Digital Divide

○ The Internet can have a massive socio-economic impact

○ Improved accessibility is key to UNICEF development goals

● The Internet ecosystem is complex

○ It needs to be fully understood in order to make appropriate and effective interventions

○ It is not something you can learn in an hour

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A brief history

of the Internet.

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History: ARPANET - 1969

The precursor to the modern internet was an academic research

project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects

Agency, a branch of the military known for funding ambitious research

projects without

immediate commercial or

military applications.

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History: ARPANET - 1973

In 1973, the ARPANET became international, with a satellite link

connecting Norway and

London to the other

nodes in the United

States. Hawaii also

joined the network by

satellite. At this point, the

network had around 40

nodes. E-mail and FTP is

born.

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History: The Internet is born - 1984

ARPANET was managed by the military. But

network operators

realized that a centralized network would eventually become unmanageable if it continued to grow.

They decided that the network should be reorganized as a

decentralized "network of

networks."

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History: The Internet is born - 1984

Under this scheme,

different networks would be controlled by different organizations, but all

would communicate using

shared standards, forming

a shared "internet." The

military asked Robert

Kahn and Vint Cerf to

develop new networking

standards to make this

possible.

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History: NSFNET - 1992

During the 1980s, the National Science

Network funded several supercomputing centers around the United States.

In 1986 the agency

created a TCP/IP-based network called NSFNET to link those

supercomputing centers

together for academic

research purposes.

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History: NSFNET - 1992

However, the NSF decided not to limit

NSFNET to that purpose, allowing the network to be used for a variety of purposes. As a result, the NSFNET became the Internet's "backbone," the high-speed, long-

distance network that allowed different parts of the Internet to

communicate.

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History: The global Internet - 1993

In 1993, the internet was still dominated by the United

States but it was becoming a truly global network. This is a map of information flow on Usenet, a bulletin board

application that allowed users to swap recipes, jokes,

programming tips, and more.

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History: Privatization - 1994

The Clinton Administration

privatized the internet backbone.

Commercial firms took over the job of carrying long-distance internet traffic, allowing the

government-funded NSFNET to

be decommissioned. Officials

were careful to ensure that no

single company controlled too

much of the backbone, helping

to create a competitive market

that still exists today.

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Today: Submarine infrastructure

Today the fastest way to

transmit information over

long distances is with fiber

optic cables. Since a single

fiber core can transmit more

than 100Gbps, and a cable

can contain hundreds of

cores, a single cable can

have enough capacity for

hundreds of millions of

users.

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Today: Backbone infrastructure

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Today: Explosive growth

● The Global Context:

Exploding amounts of traffic resulting from growth in broadband

● Demand for international bandwidth grew at a

compounded annual rate

of 53% between 2007

and 2012

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Today: National broadband plans

Traffic increases are mainly from developed countries but many

developing countries are making efforts to improve broadband access

A majority (70%) of governments worldwide have now begun national broadband plans. Some Objectives:

● Develop access to high-speed internet >1Mbps per user

● Develop more optical backbones (national and international)

● Encourage FTTx and high

speed wireless networks

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Tomorrow: Growth projections

● Growth in Africa’s international bandwidth will lead the world 2012-19

● Projected to grow more than tenfold at an annual rate of 51%

(Faster than Latin America or the Middle East)

● Will reach 17.2Tbps in 2019

● This capacity will still be less

than Canada alone! (37million

people vs 1.27billion people in

Africa in 2019)

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Behind the scenes

Video: EuroIX - The Internet Revealed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2jb1tzXzMw

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Key concepts

Intelligence at the edge, and the Open Internet

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Key concepts: Intelligent edge

The Internet’s intelligence is at the edge, not in the core:

● Intelligence at the core: "Is it worth making the necessary

modifications and upgrades to the intelligence at the center of our network – and will doing it make us more money?"

● Intelligence at the edge: If you want to try something new, all you need is two (or more) endpoints with the right software.

This is a key part of what makes the Internet a uniquely powerful

platform for innovation.

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Key concepts: The Open Internet

The Internet as we know it uses free, publicly available standards that anyone can access and build to. It treats all traffic that flows across the network in roughly the same way.

Once you're connected, you don't have to ask permission or pay additional tolls to reach others on the network.

This model makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to easily launch innovative applications and services, revolutionizing the way people communicate, participate, create, and do business.

This promotes competition and enables investment and

innovation.

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Internet economics

and market dynamics.

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What is Internet Transit?

● To get connected, connect to someone who is already connected.

● Internet Transit is the business relationship whereby an entity provides (usually sells) access to the Internet.

● An Internet Service Providers (ISP), also called a “Transit Provider”, is an entity that sells access to the Internet.

● Typically sold as a metered service ($/Mbps)

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Tier-1 and Tier-2 networks

● In order to have connectivity to the "global Internet", an ISP must be connected to at least one other ISP which already has a "global Internet" connection.

● All Internet Service Providers must buy transit, with the exception of a small number of very large ISPs (called "Tier-1" ISPs) who have their own global backbone infrastructure.

● In this model, all Internet traffic flowing between smaller ISPs (also

called "Tier-2" ISPs) has to pass through their transit providers'

networks.

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Peering

● Some Tier-2 ISPs decide to interconnect directly in order to save transit costs and reduce the number of networks (i.e. 'hops') their traffic must pass through. This practice is called "peering.”

● Peering commonly takes place at Internet exchange points (IXPs)

○ IXPs enable local networks to efficiently exchange information at a common point within a country.

○ IXPs can increase the affordability and quality of the Internet for local communities.

● Refer to EuroIX video:

○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2jb1tzXzMw

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Content and eyeball networks

● In Internet networking, the term “content” refers to any information or data which users demand.

● If your network has content that users on other networks demand, your network gains leverage over those networks.

● If your network has a large number of customers (i.e. eyeballs) that content providers need access to, your network also gains leverage over those networks.

● These growth strategies are not mutually exclusive.

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Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)

● Distributed delivery platform for content

● One copy sent to a cache can serve millions of users

● Frees up backbone capacity

● Savings on network Opex and Capex

○ Reduced transit costs for ISP

● Content sits closer to end-users

○ Improved performance

● CDN’s are commonly shared at an IXP

● Examples:

○ Akamai and Limelight distribute content for third parties

○ Google and Microsoft distribute their own content

Transit Provider Content Network

Eyeball Network

USERS CDN

USERS

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Old style economics

The Internet was mainly a two-sided market...

● Money flowed towards the middle – to the international carriers with

the biggest investment in infrastructure.

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New style economics

The Internet is still a two-sided market, but large content providers and local Tier-2 ISPs usually have no financial relationship...

Peering

Why is peering free? It’s a mutually beneficial relationship...

● Content Providers need Eyeball Networks

● Eyeball Networks need Content Providers

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CDN impact on IXPs

● More data traffic flowing through the exchange

● More networks join the exchange

● Networks upgrade their connections to the exchange

● Helps develop the local Internet ecosystem

● Creates virtuous cycle

Impact of Google CDN at UIXP (2013)

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Content closer to users...

● Benefits networks:

○ Savings on transit/international bandwidth

○ Savings on Opex and Capex

○ Improved customer perception of service, increasing usage and driving up revenue growth

● Benefits users:

○ Lower latency

○ Faster downloads

○ Improved reliability

● Benefits Internet exchange points:

○ Increased traffic on IXP; increased value to member networks/ISPs

○ Availability of content increases attractiveness of IXP, encouraging more networks/ISPs to connect

○ Improves performance for both CDN content and all locally exchanged traffic,

benefiting all users in a country.

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The African Internet

What’s holding it back?

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Where is the content now?

A very small percentage of international content is hosted within Africa.

For example, the view from Tanzania:

USA

EUROPE USA

Google, Facebook, Akamai, Yahoo, Microsoft are >50% of fixed network traffic Google, Facebook, Twitter are >40% of all mobile network traffic

Locally oriented content (newspapers, government) is also hosted abroad

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What do content providers need?

● Access to national or regional traffic aggregation points

○ Requires well functioning IXPs and carrier neutral data centre facilities with many networks present

● Multiple, competitive national & cross-border fibre networks

● Competing or open-access/non-discriminatory submarine cable landing stations

● Friendly regulation

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Africa is not the first to suffer...

European Internet circa 1995...

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Africa is not the first to suffer...

Then European IXPs emerged…

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Africa is not the first to suffer...

● As the European Internet ecosystem improved, local content developed.

● Aside from the emergence of IXPs, deregulation in the telecom sector encouraged construction of multiple affordable European fibre networks, removing “tromboning” problems.

● US networks and trans-Atlantic links became less important.

● Result: Now over 50% of European Internet traffic is peered at

European exchange points (with the rest delivered by European

transit providers).

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Example

Uganda Internet eXchange Point

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Uganda Internet eXchange Point

● Founded in 2001 with funding provided by DFID

● Started with only a few networks

● Hosted in a government building (UCC)

● ISPs built links to the facility at their own cost

○ VSAT bandwidth was extremely expensive

● Initially only small amounts of traffic

○ No local content

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UGANDA

ISP

ISP ISP

ISP

Before the UIXP. Hosting outside made more sense.

$

$ $

$

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ISP

ISP ISP

ISP

IXP

UIXP established in 2001

$

$ $

$

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ISP

ISP ISP

ISP

IXP

The first signs of life: local hosting

$

$ $

$

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ISP

ISP ISP

ISP

IXP

Corporate services emerge

$

$ $

$

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ISP

ISP ISP

ISP

IXP

Government websites migrate home

$

$ $

$

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ISP

ISP ISP

ISP

IXP

CDNs join the party

$

$ $

$

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ISP

ISP ISP

ISP

IXP

e-Government services start to appear

$

$ $

$

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● Today:

○ 13 connected networks

○ 600% traffic growth in 2013

○ Peak daily traffic exceeding 200Mbps

Uganda Internet eXchange Point

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What’s the solution?

Improved policy and regulation

Support existing international efforts

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Improved policy and regulation

Poorly functioning national and regional infrastructure in many (but not all) countries in Africa is the result of a wide variety of policy and

regulatory deficiencies. Key focus areas are:

1. The priority given to improving access to broadband in the overall development strategy for the country.

2. ICT sector development and national broadband strategies -

particularly telecom/ISP market liberalisation - and ensuring open access to the existing infrastructure of incumbents, utilities, etc.

3. National or regional infrastructure development projects.

4. Policies to promote ICT access and uptake - demand building

and/or removal of constraints to uptake such as import taxes, lack of energy, etc.

5. Harmonising policies with neighbouring countries.

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Support existing efforts

The specific challenges and solutions have already been identified (and agreed upon) by international institutions, national governments,

industry groups, and others which have been working to address these issues for years:

● The African Union

● Regional economic communities (e.g. EAC)

● National governments

● Major industry forums and capacity building organizations

○ The African Peering and Interconnection Forum

○ The African Network Operators Group

● Local and regional network operator groups (NOGs)

The specific issues can be discussed in more detail separately.

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Closing points and discussion

The digital divide is a complex issue. The Internet ecosystem needs to be fully understood in order to make appropriate and effective

interventions.

There is room for both short-term and long term solutions but they should be complementary.

We are already involved in digital divide issues. How does our current work align with regional needs and objectives?

Should we align our objectives with the wider Internet community?

What would we like to do next?

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How the Internet Works

Kyle Spencer, June 2014

Director, Uganda Internet eXchange Point

Technology for Development Specialist, UNICEF

E-mail: [email protected]