On the Diversity of Interdomain Routing in Africa

Abstract

With IP networking booming in Africa, promotion of BGP peering in the region emerge, and changes in the transit behavior of ISPs serving Africa are expected. However, little is known about the IP transit topology currently forming the African Internet. Enhancing the RIPE Atlas infrastructure, we evaluate the topology interconnecting ISPs based on the continent. We reveal a variety of ISP transit habits, depending on a range of factors such as the official language or the business profile of the ISP. We highlight the emergence of IXPs in Africa, evaluating its impact on end-to-end connectivity. Our results however emphasize the remaining dominance of ISPs based outside Africa, for the provision of intracontinental paths. We study the impact of this aspect on AS path length and endto- end delay. Such results illustrate that performing measurements from a broad, diversified, range of vantage points is necessary to assess interdomain routing on the continent.