On the State of Interdomain Routing in Africa

Abstract

With IP networking booming on the African continent, initiatives to promote BGP peering in the region emerge, and changes in the transit behavior of ISPs serving Africa are expected. However, there is little knowledge on the IP transit topology currently forming the African Internet. Enhancing the RIPE Atlas measurement infrastructure, we shed light on both v4 and v6 topologies interconnecting ISPs based on the continent. We deployed 21 RIPE Atlas probes in 15 ASes located in 11 African countries, and performed measurements among a total of 214 probes scattered throughout the con- tinent. Our results emphasize the dominance of ISPs based outside Africa for the provision of intra-continental paths, as well as the impact of this aspect on AS path length and end-to-end delay. They also reveal that South Africa is being adopted as a hub, thanks to its well connected infrastructure. We show a large variety of transit habits, depending on factors such as the language, the currency or the geographic location of the ISP. We finally highlight the emergence of new IXPs in Africa.