Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka <mark.tinka () seacom mu>]

On 16/Jul/19 18:23, Joel Jaeggli wrote:
> 100ms from most of the rest of Africa is going to be a bit dubious. If
> you draw a line horizontally through Senegal the costal stuff north of
> it can mostly be served in under 100ms from Europe.
>
> While cross border terrestrial fiber exists most networks I’ve been
> exposed to have east west and north south connectivity Via submarine
> connected networks.  This make it hard to locate one low latency spot
> in the middle.

Terrestrial capacity between most countries in Africa is too expensive,
not terribly good quality and not always the shortest path.

As Joel mentions, for the Eastern & Southern African coast, those
countries are connected by marine festoons, i.e., South Africa,
Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti and Egypt. You then get
terrestrial options running deeper into the hinterlands, and depending
on the region, the quality and price will vary.

On the west side, you can get marine festoons to South Africa, Namibia,
Angola, Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal. Pricing on that side will be a lot
higher because those have generally been club cables, unlike on the East
side where you have both club and private cables.

Just to give an idea about latency between some of the cities we operate
in Africa, have a look here:

    http://as37100.net/latencymatrix/

This should give you some idea of the problem.

Mark.