Re: Colo in Africa

[Joly MacFie]

You might want to consider attending AfPIF in Mauritius 20-22 Aug

https://www.afpif.org/


-- 
---
Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
--
-

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 18/Jul/19 11:04, Denys Fedoryshchenko wrote:

> Africa, Russia...
>
> You can take as example Lebanon.
> Capital and major city in tiny country, ~40km away from each other,
> and only way you can get 2 points connected over microwaves(due
> mountains - several hops), over "licensed" providers, DSP, who hook
> this points for $10-$30/mbps/month. And many of them don't have
> support at evenings and weekend. Of course, due crappy electricity in
> country and economical situation, discharged batteries and outages at
> evening/night at "licensed" DSP sites - common case.
> The laws of the country are so cool, that it is even forbidden to lay
> optics from the building standing next to other building, unless you
> are government monopoly (and they don't sell fiber connectivity).

There is no shortage of countries around the world that stifle the
development of their telecommunications industry because they don't
understand how different the Internet is from POTS.

Countries such as Djibouti land a tremendous amount of submarine cable
systems, and yet it makes very little sense to the average operator to
deploy meaningful network there. The Middle East, Asia, Europe and Latin
America all have their own examples of the same. North America is no
exception in some parts of those countries.

You need to remember that Africa is not one country. Observing an
assessment in one country has nothing to do with the the situation in
the other 54.

>
> In Africa, many people do not have electricity at all and cook on open
> fire, i imagine what difficulties they have with connectivity.

Cooking with firewood is not a linear basis for the depth of
connectivity in Africa. Traditional views don't always work, which is
how Africa is the fastest growing mobile phone economy in the world. It
shouldn't be, but it is.

You'll need to open your mind to how differently folk get by this side
of the world.


> The last time when I worked with a team on study to invest in telecom
> in Africa - results discouraged even trying to engage in telecom
> subject there.

I'm curious where this team was based...

We have no shortage of "consultants" that desktop Africa from an office
in New York.

I can send you my consulting contract if you like. I live in Africa :-).


> I think the only ones who are interested in decent connectivity there
> - mobile operators. Maybe worth to find connections and talk to them.

Perhaps it's time I went and got my mobile operator license :-).

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Denys Fedoryshchenko]

Africa, Russia...

You can take as example Lebanon.
Capital and major city in tiny country, ~40km away from each other, and 
only way you can get 2 points connected over microwaves(due mountains - 
several hops), over "licensed" providers, DSP, who hook this points for 
$10-$30/mbps/month. And many of them don't have support at evenings and 
weekend. Of course, due crappy electricity in country and economical 
situation, discharged batteries and outages at evening/night at 
"licensed" DSP sites - common case.
The laws of the country are so cool, that it is even forbidden to lay 
optics from the building standing next to other building, unless you are 
government monopoly (and they don't sell fiber connectivity).


In Africa, many people do not have electricity at all and cook on open 
fire, i imagine what difficulties they have with connectivity.
The last time when I worked with a team on study to invest in telecom in 
Africa - results discouraged even trying to engage in telecom subject 
there.
I think the only ones who are interested in decent connectivity there - 
mobile operators. Maybe worth to find connections and talk to them.



On 2019-07-17 20:16, Mark Tinka wrote:

On 17/Jul/19 17:04, Rod Beck wrote:


The cross continent connectivity is not going to be particularly
reliable. Prone to cuts due to wars and regional turmoil. And
imagine how it takes to repair problems at the physical layer.


I think that view is too myopic... you make it sound like Namibia,
Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia are at war. Just like all other
continents, unrest exists in some states, not all of them.

For the regions the OP is interested in, there isn't any conflict
there that would prevent him from deploying network.

Terrestrial connectivity is not a viable solution because:

* It costs too much.
* Different countries (even direct neighbors) do not share social,
economic or political values.
* Most of the available network is in the hands of incumbents,
typically controlled by the gubbermint.
* It costs too much.
* There isn't sufficient capacity to drive prices down when crossing
2 or more countries.
* It costs too much.
* Many markets are closed off and it's impossible to obtain licenses
to compete.
* It costs too much.
* Much of the network is old and has barely been upgraded.
* It costs too much.
* For those bold enough to build, the terrain in some parts is not a
walkover.

* It costs too much.

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 18/Jul/19 00:04, Rod Beck wrote:

> Circuits linking Asia & Europe via Siberia have proven highly
> unreliable. Repairs are long and difficult. And arguably Russia is a
> better case scenario than Africa. More politically stable. Better
> finances. Better basic infrastructure. 

Wasn't aware Russia was a continent...

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Rod Beck]

Circuits linking Asia & Europe via Siberia have proven highly unreliable. 
Repairs are long and difficult. And arguably Russia is a better case scenario 
than Africa. More politically stable. Better finances. Better basic 
infrastructure.


From: NANOG  on behalf 
of Mark Tinka 
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2019 7:16 PM
To: nanog@nanog.org 
Subject: Re: Colo in Africa



On 17/Jul/19 17:04, Rod Beck wrote:
The cross continent connectivity is not going to be particularly reliable. 
Prone to cuts due to wars and regional turmoil. And imagine how it takes to 
repair problems at the physical layer.

I think that view is too myopic... you make it sound like Namibia, Botswana, 
Zimbabwe and Zambia are at war. Just like all other continents, unrest exists 
in some states, not all of them.

For the regions the OP is interested in, there isn't any conflict there that 
would prevent him from deploying network.

Terrestrial connectivity is not a viable solution because:

  *   It costs too much.
  *   Different countries (even direct neighbors) do not share social, economic 
or political values.
  *   Most of the available network is in the hands of incumbents, typically 
controlled by the gubbermint.
  *   It costs too much.
  *   There isn't sufficient capacity to drive prices down when crossing 2 or 
more countries.
  *   It costs too much.
  *   Many markets are closed off and it's impossible to obtain licenses to 
compete.
  *   It costs too much.
  *   Much of the network is old and has barely been upgraded.
  *   It costs too much.
  *   For those bold enough to build, the terrain in some parts is not a 
walkover.
  *   It costs too much.

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 17/Jul/19 17:04, Rod Beck wrote:
> The cross continent connectivity is not going to be particularly
> reliable. Prone to cuts due to wars and regional turmoil. And imagine
> how it takes to repair problems at the physical layer.

I think that view is too myopic... you make it sound like Namibia,
Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia are at war. Just like all other
continents, unrest exists in some states, not all of them.

For the regions the OP is interested in, there isn't any conflict there
that would prevent him from deploying network.

Terrestrial connectivity is not a viable solution because:

  * It costs too much.
  * Different countries (even direct neighbors) do not share social,
economic or political values.
  * Most of the available network is in the hands of incumbents,
typically controlled by the gubbermint.
  * It costs too much.
  * There isn't sufficient capacity to drive prices down when crossing 2
or more countries.
  * It costs too much.
  * Many markets are closed off and it's impossible to obtain licenses
to compete.
  * It costs too much.
  * Much of the network is old and has barely been upgraded.
  * It costs too much.
  * For those bold enough to build, the terrain in some parts is not a
walkover.
  * It costs too much.

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Rod Beck]

The cross continent connectivity is not going to be particularly reliable. 
Prone to cuts due to wars and regional turmoil. And imagine how it takes to 
repair problems at the physical layer.


From: NANOG  on behalf of Eric Kuhnke 

Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2019 3:05 AM
To: Ken Gilmour ; nanog@nanog.org list 
Subject: Re: Colo in Africa

Without being more specific on what geographic region you want to serve, in 
terms of ISPs, it's hard to say.

For example:

If you look at submarine cable topology at layer 1, and BGP sessions, AS 
adjacencies between ISPs: Freetown, Sierra Leone and Monrovia, Liberia are 
suburbs of London, UK.

If you want to reach major things in the west african region the two best 
connected places are Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria.

On the other hand, if you put equipment topologically close to the cable 
landing station in Accra it will have rather poor connectivity to the east side 
of Africa. It's a big place and there is very little cross-continent 
connectivity that doesn't take the long way around via submarine fiber to Cape 
Town, and then up the east coast.


On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 7:34 AM Ken Gilmour 
mailto:ken.gilm...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Folks,

I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small POP in 
Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if you could 
help guide me in the right direction for research?

The challenges:

  1.  Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as opposed to 
serving smaller numbers of larger files).
  2.  Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full capacity 
of each server, all the time.
  3.  Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
  4.  We can initially only have one POP

This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old provider", 
the requirements are very different.

Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers 
(something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa that 
can serve most of the region?

"Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no legal 
restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms) to the 
rest of Africa.

Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like 
something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle East 
will be deployed after Africa.

I hope this is the right place to ask.

Thanks!

Ken

Re: Colo in Africa

[Gregoire Ehoumi via NANOG]

Ken,You can have useful information in AFNOG mailing list 
(af...@afnog.org).--Gregoire Ehoumi-- Original message--From: Ken 
GilmourDate: Tue, Jul 16, 2019 6:48 PMTo: C. A. Fillekes;Cc: North 
Group;Subject:Re: Colo in AfricaWhat matters is whether or not we can get a 
facility in Africa to provide service to our customers from Bare Metal Servers 
:)On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 16:07, C. A. Fillekes  wrote:Are 
they refreshing data they've already got, though? This is the classic use case 
for client-side caching. On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 5:56 PM Ken Gilmour 
 wrote:We have a different use case to traditional 
analytics - We're aimed at consumers and small businesses, so instead of a SOC 
with one big screen refreshing 1 rows of only alert data every 30 seconds, 
we have thousands of individuals refreshing all of their data every 30 seconds 
because there are comparatively less alerts for individuals than 
enterprises.What you "should" do often do
 esn't translate to what you "do" do.On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 11:23, Valdis 
Kl??tnieks  wrote:On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:39:59 -0600, 
Ken Gilmour said:

> These are actual real problems we face. thousands of customers load and
> reload TBs of data every few seconds on their dashboards.

If they're reloading TBs of data every few seconds, you really should have been
doing summaries during data ingestion and only reloading the summaries.
(Overlooking the fact that for dashboards, refreshing every few seconds is
usually pointless because you end up looking at short-term statistical spikes
rather than anything that you can react to at human speeds.?? If you *care* in
real time that the number of probes on a port spiked to 457% of average for 2
seconds you need to be doing automated responses

Custom queries are more painful - but those don't happen "every few seconds".

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mehmet Akcin]

Visit https://live.infrapedia.com and you can connect colo owners ,
capacity owners directly

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 15:34 Ken Gilmour  wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small POP
> in Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if you
> could help guide me in the right direction for research?
>
> The challenges:
>
>1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as
>opposed to serving smaller numbers of larger files).
>2. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full
>capacity of each server, all the time.
>3. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
>4. We can initially only have one POP
>
> This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old
> provider", the requirements are very different.
>
> Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
> (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa
> that can serve most of the region?
>
> "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no legal
> restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms) to the
> rest of Africa.
>
> Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like
> something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle
> East will be deployed after Africa.
>
> I hope this is the right place to ask.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Ken
>
-- 
Mehmet
+1-424-298-1903

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 17/Jul/19 02:32, Joel M Snyder wrote:

>  
> When a lot of people say "Africa," they really mean "South Africa"
> (the small country), and there is great connectivity there---but
> positioning yourself in South Africa doesn't really help you any more
> to get to Ghana (for example) than being in the Netherlands.

I've been dealing with a number of customers that are now investing - as
an initial approach into Africa - in East Africa, mostly Kenya.

So while South Africa seems an obvious choice for a number of reasons,
Kenya is quickly becoming an immediate option to that for operators that
want to kick-start something off in Africa. Also, because South Africa
is most obvious most of the time, a few operators are looking to do
something unique.


> If you really are thinking AFRICA as in AFRICA, you probably should
> use an approach that divides it into regions.  You can break it up
> however you want, but if you start with 4 regions (Southern, Northern,
> Western, Eastern/Central) you'll have chunks that actually hold
> together from a telecoms point of view pretty well.

Yes, that's a good place to start.


> My best experiences (and these are about 3 years out of date) have
> been in Jo'burg (Southern), Nairobi/Addis (Eastern/Central), Ghana
> (Western), and Egypt (Northern), but there is a lot of interest and a
> lot of progress so getting some ground knowledge would be a good idea.

For East Africa, Mombasa is actually more ideal than Nairobi because you
are close to all the major cable systems, being a coastal city. But most
importantly, because Kenya's 1st carrier-neutral data centre (iColo) is
operational there.

Nairobi is some 5ms - 6ms away, so it's not the end of the world.
However, iColo will also be launching in Nairobi in a few months from now.


> The real bandwidth is submarine cables that go up and down the coasts
> --- you can find some maps of these of varying accuracy and quality
> --- while actual E/W and N/S connectivity in the center of the
> continent is much more limited.

SEACOM and EASSy are your main systems on the East. There is the TEAMS
system, but that runs east to Fujairah.

WACS is your main system on the west.

You don't necessarily need to buy capacity on those systems, as there
are a number of operators (including the marine operations, themselves)
that have built IP backbones over those systems.

Google and Facebook are building new cables around Africa over the next
few years as well:

   
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2019/07/03/google-and-facebook-to-build-own-undersea-cables-around-africa/#68e23529de16

Angola Cables launched SACS, which covers the western part of southern
Africa, South America and the southern tips of North America:

   
https://www.angolacables.co.ao/en/sacs-cable-to-boost-connectivity-in-africa-via-teraco-data-centres/

> There are a number of Internet-promoting organizations in Africa---you
> can start with ISOC and Afrinic that sponsor a number of projects
> aimed at increasing capacity there, but you'll find a bunch of people
> trying to do good things.  If you are mostly interested in South
> Africa, there's NAPAfrica and SAFNOG (Southern African equivalent of
> NANOG) as information sources.

AfPIF, iWeek and SAFNOG will all be happening between Mauritius and
Johannesburg week of the 19th and week of the 26th August.

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 17/Jul/19 03:05, Eric Kuhnke wrote:

> Without being more specific on what geographic region you want to
> serve, in terms of ISPs, it's hard to say.
>
> For example:
>
> If you look at submarine cable topology at layer 1, and BGP sessions,
> AS adjacencies between ISPs: Freetown, Sierra Leone and Monrovia,
> Liberia are suburbs of London, UK.
>
> If you want to reach major things in the west african region the two
> best connected places are Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria.
>
> On the other hand, if you put equipment topologically close to the
> cable landing station in Accra it will have rather poor connectivity
> to the east side of Africa. It's a big place and there is very little
> cross-continent connectivity that doesn't take the long way around via
> submarine fiber to Cape Town, and then up the east coast.

The shortest path to get to East Africa from West Africa is as south as
you can go into Europe.

I suppose if you are trying to interconnect both regions for corporate
reasons, that should be okay. But if you're trying to offload content,
it's easier to do cache-fill from Europe and distribute locally.

It's easier to get your systems talking to one another between Eastern
and Southern Africa (and either one to/from Europe) as the connectivity
on that side is a lot more robust.

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 17/Jul/19 02:32, Joel M Snyder wrote:

>  
> When a lot of people say "Africa," they really mean "South Africa"
> (the small country), and there is great connectivity there---but
> positioning yourself in South Africa doesn't really help you any more
> to get to Ghana (for example) than being in the Netherlands.

I've been dealing with a number of customers that are not investing - as
an initial approach into Africa - in East Africa, mostly Kenya.

So while South Africa seems an obvious choice for a number of reasons,
Kenya is quickly becoming an immediate option to that for operators that
want to kick-start something off in Africa. Also, because South Africa
is most obvious most of the time, a few operators are looking to do
something unique.


>
> If you really are thinking AFRICA as in AFRICA, you probably should
> use an approach that divides it into regions.  You can break it up
> however you want, but if you start with 4 regions (Southern, Northern,
> Western, Eastern/Central) you'll have chunks that actually hold
> together from a telecoms point of view pretty well.

Yes, that's a good place to start.


>
> My best experiences (and these are about 3 years out of date) have
> been in Jo'burg (Southern), Nairobi/Addis (Eastern/Central), Ghana
> (Western), and Egypt (Northern), but there is a lot of interest and a
> lot of progress so getting some ground knowledge would be a good idea.

For East Africa, Mombasa is actually more ideal than Nairobi because you
are close to all the major cable systems, being a coastal city. But most
importantly, because Kenya's 1st carrier-neutral data centre (iColo) is
operational there.

Nairobi is some 5ms - 6ms away, so it's not the end of the world.
However, iColo will also be launching in Nairobi in a few months from now.


>
> The real bandwidth is submarine cables that go up and down the coasts
> --- you can find some maps of these of varying accuracy and quality
> --- while actual E/W and N/S connectivity in the center of the
> continent is much more limited.

SEACOM and EASSy are your main systems on the East. There is the TEAMS
system, but that runs east to Fujairah.

WACS is your main system on the west.

You don't necessarily need to buy capacity on those systems, as there
are a number of operators (including the marine operations, themselves)
that have built IP backbones over those systems.

Google and Facebook are building new cables around Africa over the next
few years as well:

   
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2019/07/03/google-and-facebook-to-build-own-undersea-cables-around-africa/#68e23529de16

Angola Cables launched SACS, which covers the western part of southern
Africa, South America and the southern tips of North America:

   
https://www.angolacables.co.ao/en/sacs-cable-to-boost-connectivity-in-africa-via-teraco-data-centres/

>
> There are a number of Internet-promoting organizations in Africa---you
> can start with ISOC and Afrinic that sponsor a number of projects
> aimed at increasing capacity there, but you'll find a bunch of people
> trying to do good things.  If you are mostly interested in South
> Africa, there's NAPAfrica and SAFNOG (Southern African equivalent of
> NANOG) as information sources.

AfPIF, iWeek and SAFNOG will all be happening between Mauritius and
Johannesburg week of the 19th and week of the 26th August.

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 17/Jul/19 00:57, Sina Owolabi wrote:
> If Nigeria is a possible location, you have a few, off the top of my
> head is any telco's colo (MTN, Airtel, Glo, or 9Mobile), and there's
> RackCentre, MainOne and I think IPNX for colo (virtual and bare
> metal).

My concern about Nigeria is co-lo that isn't carrier-neutral.

AFAIK, Medallion come close to being carrier-neutral, but then bandwidth
pricing into the country becomes an issue at scale.

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Ken Gilmour]

I feel like I'm arguing with my teenager over why the WiFi is slow.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mike Hammett]

But cloud all of the things!! 




- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 

Midwest Internet Exchange 

The Brothers WISP 

- Original Message -

From: "Seth Mattinen"  
To: nanog@nanog.org 
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2019 6:45:35 PM 
Subject: Re: Colo in Africa 

On 7/16/19 4:30 PM, Ken Gilmour wrote: 
> TBs of data is not really that much data on average when you average it 
> over thousands of customers. The data is summarized, There are a ton of 
> other things happening in the background that I've already explained in 
> the thread and are really irrelevant to the task at hand which is 
> finding a facility in Africa that does Bare Metal servers. I've had a 
> lot of helpful people, despite the naysayers. 
> 


I did find all of the "why not cloud" responses disappointing when you 
asked for colo of servers. On this list I would assume someone asking 
for a specific thing knows why they want it. 

Re: Colo in Africa

[Eric Kuhnke]

Without being more specific on what geographic region you want to serve, in
terms of ISPs, it's hard to say.

For example:

If you look at submarine cable topology at layer 1, and BGP sessions, AS
adjacencies between ISPs: Freetown, Sierra Leone and Monrovia, Liberia are
suburbs of London, UK.

If you want to reach major things in the west african region the two best
connected places are Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria.

On the other hand, if you put equipment topologically close to the cable
landing station in Accra it will have rather poor connectivity to the east
side of Africa. It's a big place and there is very little cross-continent
connectivity that doesn't take the long way around via submarine fiber to
Cape Town, and then up the east coast.


On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 7:34 AM Ken Gilmour  wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small POP
> in Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if you
> could help guide me in the right direction for research?
>
> The challenges:
>
>1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as
>opposed to serving smaller numbers of larger files).
>2. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full
>capacity of each server, all the time.
>3. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
>4. We can initially only have one POP
>
> This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old
> provider", the requirements are very different.
>
> Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
> (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa
> that can serve most of the region?
>
> "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no legal
> restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms) to the
> rest of Africa.
>
> Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like
> something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle
> East will be deployed after Africa.
>
> I hope this is the right place to ask.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Ken
>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Joel M Snyder]

Ken:

>Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
>(something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within
>Africa that can serve most of the region?

Africa is a tough nut to crack.  I have been building networks there for 
clients for decades and the first thing to understand is that Africa is 
BIG.  Geographically, you can fit the US, Europe, and Canada (and have 
room to spare).  Typical Mercator maps make it look much smaller than it 
really is.  Anyway, my point here is that you should not be thinking 
about Africa as "a region" or "a continent."


When a lot of people say "Africa," they really mean "South Africa" (the 
small country), and there is great connectivity there---but positioning 
yourself in South Africa doesn't really help you any more to get to 
Ghana (for example) than being in the Netherlands.


If you really are thinking AFRICA as in AFRICA, you probably should use 
an approach that divides it into regions.  You can break it up however 
you want, but if you start with 4 regions (Southern, Northern, Western, 
Eastern/Central) you'll have chunks that actually hold together from a 
telecoms point of view pretty well.


My best experiences (and these are about 3 years out of date) have been 
in Jo'burg (Southern), Nairobi/Addis (Eastern/Central), Ghana (Western), 
and Egypt (Northern), but there is a lot of interest and a lot of 
progress so getting some ground knowledge would be a good idea.


The real bandwidth is submarine cables that go up and down the coasts 
--- you can find some maps of these of varying accuracy and quality --- 
while actual E/W and N/S connectivity in the center of the continent is 
much more limited.


There are a number of Internet-promoting organizations in Africa---you 
can start with ISOC and Afrinic that sponsor a number of projects aimed 
at increasing capacity there, but you'll find a bunch of people trying 
to do good things.  If you are mostly interested in South Africa, 
there's NAPAfrica and SAFNOG (Southern African equivalent of NANOG) as 
information sources.


Anyway: I can get more specific, but it's hard to really offer 
super-specific advice on a vague question because, you know, Africa. 
That's a big topic.


jms


--
Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719
Senior Partner, Opus One   Phone: +1 520 324 0494
j...@opus1.comhttp://www.opus1.com/jms

Re: Colo in Africa

[Valdis Klētnieks]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 15:54:10 -0600, Ken Gilmour said:

> We have a different use case to traditional analytics - We're aimed at
> consumers and small businesses, so instead of a SOC with one big screen
> refreshing 1 rows of only alert data every 30 seconds, we have
> thousands of individuals refreshing all of their data every 30 seconds
> because there are comparatively less alerts for individuals than
> enterprises.

Plenty of room for lots of optimizations there, especially in conjunction
with some client-side caching.  If they're generating enough *new* events
every 30 seconds to cause any significant load, they're either in the middle
of a major event (something that shouldn't happen too often)  or they have
the logging is set to be so verbose that they're likely to miss actual important
messages.


pgpBsYa0nzNW2.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Colo in Africa

[Seth Mattinen]

On 7/16/19 4:30 PM, Ken Gilmour wrote:
TBs of data is not really that much data on average when  you average it 
over thousands of customers. The data is summarized, There are a ton of 
other things happening in the background that I've already explained in 
the thread and are really irrelevant to the task at hand which is 
finding a facility in Africa that does Bare Metal servers. I've had a 
lot of helpful people, despite the naysayers.





I did find all of the "why not cloud" responses disappointing when you 
asked for colo of servers. On this list I would assume someone asking 
for a specific thing knows why they want it.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Ken Gilmour]

TBs of data is not really that much data on average when  you average it
over thousands of customers. The data is summarized, There are a ton of
other things happening in the background that I've already explained in the
thread and are really irrelevant to the task at hand which is finding a
facility in Africa that does Bare Metal servers. I've had a lot of helpful
people, despite the naysayers.

Thanks!

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 11:23, Valdis Klētnieks 
wrote:

> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:39:59 -0600, Ken Gilmour said:
>
> > These are actual real problems we face. thousands of customers load and
> > reload TBs of data every few seconds on their dashboards.
>
> If they're reloading TBs of data every few seconds, you really should have
> been
> doing summaries during data ingestion and only reloading the summaries.
> (Overlooking the fact that for dashboards, refreshing every few seconds is
> usually pointless because you end up looking at short-term statistical
> spikes
> rather than anything that you can react to at human speeds.  If you *care*
> in
> real time that the number of probes on a port spiked to 457% of average
> for 2
> seconds you need to be doing automated responses
>
> Custom queries are more painful - but those don't happen "every few
> seconds".
>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Sina Owolabi]

If Nigeria is a possible location, you have a few, off the top of my
head is any telco's colo (MTN, Airtel, Glo, or 9Mobile), and there's
RackCentre, MainOne and I think IPNX for colo (virtual and bare
metal).

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 11:48 PM Ken Gilmour  wrote:
>
> What matters is whether or not we can get a facility in Africa to provide 
> service to our customers from Bare Metal Servers :)
>
> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 16:07, C. A. Fillekes  wrote:
>>
>> Are they refreshing data they've already got, though?
>> This is the classic use case for client-side caching.
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 5:56 PM Ken Gilmour  wrote:
>>>
>>> We have a different use case to traditional analytics - We're aimed at 
>>> consumers and small businesses, so instead of a SOC with one big screen 
>>> refreshing 1 rows of only alert data every 30 seconds, we have 
>>> thousands of individuals refreshing all of their data every 30 seconds 
>>> because there are comparatively less alerts for individuals than 
>>> enterprises.
>>>
>>> What you "should" do often doesn't translate to what you "do" do.
>>>
>>> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 11:23, Valdis Klētnieks  
>>> wrote:

 On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:39:59 -0600, Ken Gilmour said:

 > These are actual real problems we face. thousands of customers load and
 > reload TBs of data every few seconds on their dashboards.

 If they're reloading TBs of data every few seconds, you really should have 
 been
 doing summaries during data ingestion and only reloading the summaries.
 (Overlooking the fact that for dashboards, refreshing every few seconds is
 usually pointless because you end up looking at short-term statistical 
 spikes
 rather than anything that you can react to at human speeds.  If you *care* 
 in
 real time that the number of probes on a port spiked to 457% of average 
 for 2
 seconds you need to be doing automated responses

 Custom queries are more painful - but those don't happen "every few 
 seconds".



-- 

cordially yours,

Sina Owolabi

+2348176469061

Re: Colo in Africa

[Ken Gilmour]

What matters is whether or not we can get a facility in Africa to provide
service to our customers from Bare Metal Servers :)

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 16:07, C. A. Fillekes  wrote:

> Are they refreshing data they've already got, though?
> This is the classic use case for client-side caching.
>
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 5:56 PM Ken Gilmour  wrote:
>
>> We have a different use case to traditional analytics - We're aimed at
>> consumers and small businesses, so instead of a SOC with one big screen
>> refreshing 1 rows of only alert data every 30 seconds, we have
>> thousands of individuals refreshing all of their data every 30 seconds
>> because there are comparatively less alerts for individuals than
>> enterprises.
>>
>> What you "should" do often doesn't translate to what you "do" do.
>>
>> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 11:23, Valdis Klētnieks 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:39:59 -0600, Ken Gilmour said:
>>>
>>> > These are actual real problems we face. thousands of customers load and
>>> > reload TBs of data every few seconds on their dashboards.
>>>
>>> If they're reloading TBs of data every few seconds, you really should
>>> have been
>>> doing summaries during data ingestion and only reloading the summaries.
>>> (Overlooking the fact that for dashboards, refreshing every few seconds
>>> is
>>> usually pointless because you end up looking at short-term statistical
>>> spikes
>>> rather than anything that you can react to at human speeds.  If you
>>> *care* in
>>> real time that the number of probes on a port spiked to 457% of average
>>> for 2
>>> seconds you need to be doing automated responses
>>>
>>> Custom queries are more painful - but those don't happen "every few
>>> seconds".
>>>
>>

Re: Colo in Africa

[C. A. Fillekes]

Are they refreshing data they've already got, though?
This is the classic use case for client-side caching.

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 5:56 PM Ken Gilmour  wrote:

> We have a different use case to traditional analytics - We're aimed at
> consumers and small businesses, so instead of a SOC with one big screen
> refreshing 1 rows of only alert data every 30 seconds, we have
> thousands of individuals refreshing all of their data every 30 seconds
> because there are comparatively less alerts for individuals than
> enterprises.
>
> What you "should" do often doesn't translate to what you "do" do.
>
> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 11:23, Valdis Klētnieks 
> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:39:59 -0600, Ken Gilmour said:
>>
>> > These are actual real problems we face. thousands of customers load and
>> > reload TBs of data every few seconds on their dashboards.
>>
>> If they're reloading TBs of data every few seconds, you really should
>> have been
>> doing summaries during data ingestion and only reloading the summaries.
>> (Overlooking the fact that for dashboards, refreshing every few seconds is
>> usually pointless because you end up looking at short-term statistical
>> spikes
>> rather than anything that you can react to at human speeds.  If you
>> *care* in
>> real time that the number of probes on a port spiked to 457% of average
>> for 2
>> seconds you need to be doing automated responses
>>
>> Custom queries are more painful - but those don't happen "every few
>> seconds".
>>
>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Ken Gilmour]

We have a different use case to traditional analytics - We're aimed at
consumers and small businesses, so instead of a SOC with one big screen
refreshing 1 rows of only alert data every 30 seconds, we have
thousands of individuals refreshing all of their data every 30 seconds
because there are comparatively less alerts for individuals than
enterprises.

What you "should" do often doesn't translate to what you "do" do.

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 11:23, Valdis Klētnieks 
wrote:

> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:39:59 -0600, Ken Gilmour said:
>
> > These are actual real problems we face. thousands of customers load and
> > reload TBs of data every few seconds on their dashboards.
>
> If they're reloading TBs of data every few seconds, you really should have
> been
> doing summaries during data ingestion and only reloading the summaries.
> (Overlooking the fact that for dashboards, refreshing every few seconds is
> usually pointless because you end up looking at short-term statistical
> spikes
> rather than anything that you can react to at human speeds.  If you *care*
> in
> real time that the number of probes on a port spiked to 457% of average
> for 2
> seconds you need to be doing automated responses
>
> Custom queries are more painful - but those don't happen "every few
> seconds".
>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Hendrik Meyburgh]

I suggest you look at the Teraco facilities, specifically the JB1 (Isando)
site. It is extremely well connected and carrier-neutral so you can choose
who you want to use.

Depending on your requirement you might need to work through a reseller. I
work for an SP in South Africa, so let me know offline if you need any help.

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:34 PM Ken Gilmour  wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small POP
> in Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if you
> could help guide me in the right direction for research?
>
> The challenges:
>
>1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as
>opposed to serving smaller numbers of larger files).
>2. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full
>capacity of each server, all the time.
>3. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
>4. We can initially only have one POP
>
> This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old
> provider", the requirements are very different.
>
> Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
> (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa
> that can serve most of the region?
>
> "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no legal
> restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms) to the
> rest of Africa.
>
> Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like
> something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle
> East will be deployed after Africa.
>
> I hope this is the right place to ask.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Ken
>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Valdis Klētnieks]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 11:13:45 -0700, Seth Mattinen said:
> On 7/16/19 10:53 AM, Akshay Kumar via NANOG wrote:
> > Then you are "doing it wrong(tm). Good luck.
>
>
> Are you saying that anyone choosing not to use "the cloud" is simply
> wrong because "cloud" is always right?

No, he's saying that if you're data-mining the same terabytes of data
every few seconds, you're doing it wrong.



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Description: PGP signature

Re: Colo in Africa

[Seth Mattinen]

On 7/16/19 10:53 AM, Akshay Kumar via NANOG wrote:

Then you are "doing it wrong(tm). Good luck.



Are you saying that anyone choosing not to use "the cloud" is simply 
wrong because "cloud" is always right?

Re: Colo in Africa

[Akshay Kumar via NANOG]

Then you are "doing it wrong(tm). Good luck.

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 5:40 PM Ken Gilmour  wrote:

> These are actual real problems we face. thousands of customers load and
> reload TBs of data every few seconds on their dashboards. We have busy
> servers. We tried cloud. I passionately hate it. We choose to use Bare
> Metal.
>
> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 10:34, Akshay Kumar  wrote:
>
>> Go look at the actual specifications for one of the metal boxes - you are
>> not going to come close to maxing anything out with the workload you
>> describe. FSB hasn't been a thing in over a decade. If you really wanted to
>> go crazy you could do some build a custom solution in FPGA on the F1s.
>>
>> It's a moot point since none of this is going to be available in time but
>> perf is a bogus reason and a lot of the times price is too.
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 5:12 PM Ken Gilmour 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Speed is not the issue, it's IO. Also streaming 100Gbps of video is very
>>> different to streaming 100Gbps of files smaller than 100kb (average of
>>> about 30kb) the issue on the network level is the number of connections and
>>> CPU, on the server side it's IO and FSB
>>>
>>> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 08:55, Akshay Kumar  wrote:
>>>
 The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a
 long way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances
 in AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.

 Just just use the South Africa AWS region.

 On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 3:35 PM Ken Gilmour 
 wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small
> POP in Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if
> you could help guide me in the right direction for research?
>
> The challenges:
>
>1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as
>opposed to serving smaller numbers of larger files).
>2. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the
>full capacity of each server, all the time.
>3. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
>4. We can initially only have one POP
>
> This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old
> provider", the requirements are very different.
>
> Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
> (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa
> that can serve most of the region?
>
> "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no
> legal restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms)
> to the rest of Africa.
>
> Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like
> something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle
> East will be deployed after Africa.
>
> I hope this is the right place to ask.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Ken
>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Randy Bush]

[ there is an afnog mailing list which you might find useful ]

>3. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa

unfortunately, for common values of 'most' this is a long sad tragedy.
mark's excellent reccos can get you the fancy bits.  inter-connectivity
with africa is sad.

randy

Re: Colo in Africa

[Valdis Klētnieks]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:39:59 -0600, Ken Gilmour said:

> These are actual real problems we face. thousands of customers load and
> reload TBs of data every few seconds on their dashboards.

If they're reloading TBs of data every few seconds, you really should have been
doing summaries during data ingestion and only reloading the summaries.
(Overlooking the fact that for dashboards, refreshing every few seconds is
usually pointless because you end up looking at short-term statistical spikes
rather than anything that you can react to at human speeds.  If you *care* in
real time that the number of probes on a port spiked to 457% of average for 2
seconds you need to be doing automated responses

Custom queries are more painful - but those don't happen "every few seconds".


pgpzB88IGf2UQ.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Colo in Africa

[Valdis Klētnieks]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:11:48 -0600, Ken Gilmour said:

> Speed is not the issue, it's IO. Also streaming 100Gbps of video is very
> different to streaming 100Gbps of files smaller than 100kb (average of
> about 30kb) the issue on the network level is the number of connections and
> CPU, on the server side it's IO and FSB

The trick is to realize that 100Gbps of files smaller than 100kb can be 
remodeled
as 12 Gigabytes/sec of random 128K writes into large files.

Which isn't even that hard with modern gear, especially if you have the budget
for SSDs.


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Description: PGP signature

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 16/Jul/19 19:00, Ken Gilmour wrote:

>
> Our "market" is actually the US - but we're experiencing unexpected
> success across the world. A lot of our customers have selected
> "Africa" as their region when signing up and they are in various
> countries around Africa, they deserve to be served better within their
> continent at least.

Makes sense.


>
> We can't actually build POPs fast enough, so I want to throw as broad
> a net as possible with our first POP in Africa and then branch out
> from there. We have customers in South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria,
> Egypt, Morocco and Ghana for instance. I have resources for only one
> POP in Africa currently, need to decide where to best serve as many as
> possible. We could serve Northern Africa from EU and Southern Africa
> from Singapore, but having something within the continent would be
> preferable.

If you had to go with one PoP in Africa to start, then I'd suggest
Johannesburg. The data on your side should indicate that this is where
you have the majority of the targets. From here, you can get reasonably
well to all neighboring countries, i.e., Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho,
Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola. Farther afield,
you will have reasonable latency to East Africa as well, which will get
you Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

Phase 2, I'd say deploy in Nairobi, which will lower your latency for
your targets there, and reduce your load in Johannesburg.

Phase 3, I'd say Accra or Lagos, but that won't be as straight forward.

If you're serious about this, I'd say come down to AfPIF
(https://www.afpif.org/) and SAFNOG (http://www.safnog.org/), both of
which will be happening 20th - 22nd and 26th - 28th, August,
respectively. You will learn a lot by attending both meetings, and since
they are back-to-back, between Mauritius and Johannesburg, it is easy to
do travel-wise.

Otherwise, happy to offline a discussion with you if you want some
mail-time with our Sales droids :-).

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

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.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 16/Jul/19 17:28, Christopher Morrow wrote:

> Isn't the OP really asking here (not to have their selection of
> platform wrangled..):
>   "Where should I target my search: ZA only? is there anywhere else
> worth dropping my request?"

The easiest regions will be East (Kenya) and South (South Africa).


> and:
>   "Are there likely providers of solid colo aside from
> seacom/tinka-net or workonline/ben-net ?"

SEACOM and Workonline just do network.

For co-lo, we have solid operators in East and South:

  * Teraco - https://www.teraco.co.za/ - who will give you excellent
co-lo in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.
  * iColo - https://www.icolo.io/ - who will give you excellent co-lo in
Mombasa. Nairobi is due to open by September this year.
  * Raxio - https://www.raxio.co.ug/ - who will give you excellent co-lo
in Kampala. Door open in December this year.

Teraco run NAPAfrica, which is Africa's largest exchange point by
traffic switched - https://www.napafrica.net/. They also have instances
of the INX-ZA exchange points, which are JINX (Johannesburg), DINX
(Durban) and CINX (Cape Town).

iColo will be deploying an instance of KIXP (Kenya IXP) -
https://www.tespok.co.ke/?page_id=11648 - and Asteroid -
https://www.asteroidhq.com/.

Raxio will also host an instance of the UIXP - https://www.uixp.co.ug/.

From a network standpoint, you have a few options:

  * SEACOM - AS37100
  * Workonline - AS37271
  * Liquid - AS30844
  * WIOCC - AS37662

These are the main network operators that run a good deal of network
between Europe, Eastern Africa, Southern Africa and parts of Asia-Pac.

Hope this helps.

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Ken Gilmour]

Hi Mark,

Our "market" is actually the US - but we're experiencing unexpected success
across the world. A lot of our customers have selected "Africa" as their
region when signing up and they are in various countries around Africa,
they deserve to be served better within their continent at least.

We can't actually build POPs fast enough, so I want to throw as broad a net
as possible with our first POP in Africa and then branch out from there. We
have customers in South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco and Ghana
for instance. I have resources for only one POP in Africa currently, need
to decide where to best serve as many as possible. We could serve Northern
Africa from EU and Southern Africa from Singapore, but having something
within the continent would be preferable.

Thanks!

Ken

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 10:52, Mark Tinka  wrote:

>
>
> On 16/Jul/19 16:33, Ken Gilmour wrote:
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small POP
> in Africa.
>
>
> Where, in Africa? It's not a small place...
>
>
>
>1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as
>opposed to serving smaller numbers of larger files).
>
>
> Depending on where in Africa you want to deploy, there will be a choice of
> service providers.
>
>
>
>1. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full
>capacity of each server, all the time.
>
>
> This is possible, but will depend on where, in Africa, you want to deploy.
>
>
>
>1. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
>
>
> This is a tricky one, but if you know where you want to be, it will help
> to give you options.
>
>
>
>1. We can initially only have one POP
>
>
> Not a problem, but where?
>
>
> This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old
> provider", the requirements are very different.
>
> Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
> (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa
> that can serve most of the region?
>
>
> Africa is huge, with varying levels of quality of connectivity. The 3 main
> regions are East Africa (Kenya leading), Southern Africa (South Africa
> leading) and West Africa (Nigeria and Ghana leading).
>
> For North Africa, your options can swing between Egypt and Morocco.
>
> But stringing all of these locations together, particularly West and North
> to East and South, will not be straight forward.
>
>
>
>
> "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no legal
> restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms) to the
> rest of Africa.
>
>
> Yes, all 5 will be difficult at this point in time.
>
> For most of that, hosting within Eastern and Southern Africa will be your
> best bets.
>
> West Africa ticks a lot of the boxes, but it's not very straight forward
> when it comes to co-lo.
>
>
>
>
> Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like
> something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle
> East will be deployed after Africa.
>
>
> Singapore is closer to Eastern & Southern Africa. Will be too far to West
> Africa unless you want to switch in Europe.
>
> The Netherlands is okay for all of Africa.
>
> The Middle East is closer to Eastern Africa. Too far for West Africa
> unless you want to switch in Europe.
>
> Mark.
>

RE: Colo in Africa

[Eric Tykwinski]

One of my favorite sites to give people:
https://thetruesize.com/

Sincerely,

Eric Tykwinski
TrueNet, Inc.
P: 610-429-8300

_

From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-boun...@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Mark Tinka
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2019 12:51 PM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Colo in Africa


Where, in Africa? It's not a small place...

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 16/Jul/19 17:08, Akshay Kumar via NANOG wrote:

> My bad. They announced that Oct 2018 so I figured they'd be close to
> it now. Yeah turns out it's mid 2020 :-(

I'd take all targets with a very large grain of salt. Experience has
shown that these things always take longer than planned... and then take
longer again, after that.

There other folk offering servers (bare and virtual) in the region. So
if you're not gung-ho on a name brand, you're in luck.

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 16/Jul/19 16:55, Akshay Kumar via NANOG wrote:
> The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a
> long way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal
> instances in AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.

That said, there are various providers who can give you bare metal.

>
> Just just use the South Africa AWS region.

There are other local providers that can offer this. They just don't
carry the badge.

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 16/Jul/19 17:01, Phil Lavin wrote:

>
> They don't have a Region there at present - only an Edge location. I believe 
> one is in the works for launch next year.

You're right (as of my updates from last November).

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mark Tinka]

On 16/Jul/19 16:33, Ken Gilmour wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small
> POP in Africa.

Where, in Africa? It's not a small place...


>  1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as
> opposed to serving smaller numbers of larger files).
>

Depending on where in Africa you want to deploy, there will be a choice
of service providers.


>  1. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full
> capacity of each server, all the time.
>

This is possible, but will depend on where, in Africa, you want to deploy.


>  1. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
>

This is a tricky one, but if you know where you want to be, it will help
to give you options.


>  1. We can initially only have one POP
>

Not a problem, but where?


> This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old
> provider", the requirements are very different.
>
> Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
> (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within
> Africa that can serve most of the region?

Africa is huge, with varying levels of quality of connectivity. The 3
main regions are East Africa (Kenya leading), Southern Africa (South
Africa leading) and West Africa (Nigeria and Ghana leading).

For North Africa, your options can swing between Egypt and Morocco.

But stringing all of these locations together, particularly West and
North to East and South, will not be straight forward.



>
> "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no
> legal restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub
> 100ms) to the rest of Africa.

Yes, all 5 will be difficult at this point in time.

For most of that, hosting within Eastern and Southern Africa will be
your best bets.

West Africa ticks a lot of the boxes, but it's not very straight forward
when it comes to co-lo.



>
> Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like
> something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa.
> Middle East will be deployed after Africa.

Singapore is closer to Eastern & Southern Africa. Will be too far to
West Africa unless you want to switch in Europe.

The Netherlands is okay for all of Africa.

The Middle East is closer to Eastern Africa. Too far for West Africa
unless you want to switch in Europe.

Mark.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Ken Gilmour]

These are actual real problems we face. thousands of customers load and
reload TBs of data every few seconds on their dashboards. We have busy
servers. We tried cloud. I passionately hate it. We choose to use Bare
Metal.

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 10:34, Akshay Kumar  wrote:

> Go look at the actual specifications for one of the metal boxes - you are
> not going to come close to maxing anything out with the workload you
> describe. FSB hasn't been a thing in over a decade. If you really wanted to
> go crazy you could do some build a custom solution in FPGA on the F1s.
>
> It's a moot point since none of this is going to be available in time but
> perf is a bogus reason and a lot of the times price is too.
>
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 5:12 PM Ken Gilmour  wrote:
>
>> Speed is not the issue, it's IO. Also streaming 100Gbps of video is very
>> different to streaming 100Gbps of files smaller than 100kb (average of
>> about 30kb) the issue on the network level is the number of connections and
>> CPU, on the server side it's IO and FSB
>>
>> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 08:55, Akshay Kumar  wrote:
>>
>>> The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a
>>> long way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances
>>> in AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.
>>>
>>> Just just use the South Africa AWS region.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 3:35 PM Ken Gilmour 
>>> wrote:
>>>
 Hi Folks,

 I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small
 POP in Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if
 you could help guide me in the right direction for research?

 The challenges:

1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as
opposed to serving smaller numbers of larger files).
2. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full
capacity of each server, all the time.
3. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
4. We can initially only have one POP

 This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old
 provider", the requirements are very different.

 Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
 (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa
 that can serve most of the region?

 "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no
 legal restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms)
 to the rest of Africa.

 Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like
 something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle
 East will be deployed after Africa.

 I hope this is the right place to ask.

 Thanks!

 Ken

>>>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Ben Cannon]

Have you priced F1 solutions?  

-Ben Cannon
CEO 6x7 Networks & 6x7 Telecom, LLC 
b...@6by7.net 




> On Jul 16, 2019, at 9:33 AM, Akshay Kumar via NANOG  wrote:
> 
> Go look at the actual specifications for one of the metal boxes - you are not 
> going to come close to maxing anything out with the workload you describe. 
> FSB hasn't been a thing in over a decade. If you really wanted to go crazy 
> you could do some build a custom solution in FPGA on the F1s.
> 
> It's a moot point since none of this is going to be available in time but 
> perf is a bogus reason and a lot of the times price is too.
> 
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 5:12 PM Ken Gilmour  > wrote:
> Speed is not the issue, it's IO. Also streaming 100Gbps of video is very 
> different to streaming 100Gbps of files smaller than 100kb (average of about 
> 30kb) the issue on the network level is the number of connections and CPU, on 
> the server side it's IO and FSB
> 
> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 08:55, Akshay Kumar  > wrote:
> The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a long 
> way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances in AWS 
> if you really need them with 100Gbps.
> 
> Just just use the South Africa AWS region.
> 
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 3:35 PM Ken Gilmour  > wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small POP in 
> Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if you could 
> help guide me in the right direction for research?
> 
> The challenges:
> Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as opposed to 
> serving smaller numbers of larger files).
> Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full capacity of 
> each server, all the time.
> Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
> We can initially only have one POP
> This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old 
> provider", the requirements are very different.
> 
> Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers 
> (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa that 
> can serve most of the region?
> 
> "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no legal 
> restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms) to the 
> rest of Africa.
> 
> Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like 
> something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle East 
> will be deployed after Africa.
> 
> I hope this is the right place to ask.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Ken

Re: Colo in Africa

[Akshay Kumar via NANOG]

Go look at the actual specifications for one of the metal boxes - you are
not going to come close to maxing anything out with the workload you
describe. FSB hasn't been a thing in over a decade. If you really wanted to
go crazy you could do some build a custom solution in FPGA on the F1s.

It's a moot point since none of this is going to be available in time but
perf is a bogus reason and a lot of the times price is too.

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 5:12 PM Ken Gilmour  wrote:

> Speed is not the issue, it's IO. Also streaming 100Gbps of video is very
> different to streaming 100Gbps of files smaller than 100kb (average of
> about 30kb) the issue on the network level is the number of connections and
> CPU, on the server side it's IO and FSB
>
> On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 08:55, Akshay Kumar  wrote:
>
>> The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a
>> long way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances
>> in AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.
>>
>> Just just use the South Africa AWS region.
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 3:35 PM Ken Gilmour 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Folks,
>>>
>>> I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small
>>> POP in Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if
>>> you could help guide me in the right direction for research?
>>>
>>> The challenges:
>>>
>>>1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as
>>>opposed to serving smaller numbers of larger files).
>>>2. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full
>>>capacity of each server, all the time.
>>>3. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
>>>4. We can initially only have one POP
>>>
>>> This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old
>>> provider", the requirements are very different.
>>>
>>> Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
>>> (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa
>>> that can serve most of the region?
>>>
>>> "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no
>>> legal restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms)
>>> to the rest of Africa.
>>>
>>> Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like
>>> something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle
>>> East will be deployed after Africa.
>>>
>>> I hope this is the right place to ask.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> Ken
>>>
>>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Graham Hayes]

On 16/07/2019 16:08, Akshay Kumar via NANOG wrote:
> My bad. They announced that Oct 2018 so I figured they'd be close to it
> now. Yeah turns out it's mid 2020 :-(
> 
> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-aws-region-in-south-africa/
> 

Azure does have regions in operation in South Africa [1]

1 -
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/global-infrastructure/services/?products=kubernetes-service,virtual-machines

> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:02 PM Chris Knipe  > wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:57 PM Akshay Kumar via NANOG
> mailto:nanog@nanog.org>> wrote:
> 
> The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have
> come a long way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run
> bare metal instances in AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.
> 
> Just just use the South Africa AWS region.
> 
> 
> ^^ You had me for a second there.  AWS ain't operational yet in
> South Africa.  Sometime 2020/2021 only.
> 




signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Colo in Africa

[Joel Jaeggli]

> On Jul 16, 2019, at 07:33, Ken Gilmour  wrote:
> 
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small POP in 
> Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if you could 
> help guide me in the right direction for research?
> 
> The challenges:
> Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as opposed to 
> serving smaller numbers of larger files).
> Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full capacity of 
> each server, all the time.
> Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
> We can initially only have one POP
> This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old 
> provider", the requirements are very different.
> 
> Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers 
> (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa that 
> can serve most of the region?
> 
> "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no legal 
> restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms) to the 
> rest of Africa.

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.

NSRC has a project that can provide some background on terrestrial fiber.

https://afterfibre.nsrc.org/

The next best place to my mind for reach east and west is South Africa where 
you can pick up something of a diversity of transit find decent colo and pick 
up a few out of region peers if you locate near jinx or cinx which are both 
multi building connected exchanges.

> Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like 
> something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle East 
> will be deployed after Africa.
> 
> I hope this is the right place to ask.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Ken

Re: Colo in Africa

[Ken Gilmour]

Speed is not the issue, it's IO. Also streaming 100Gbps of video is very
different to streaming 100Gbps of files smaller than 100kb (average of
about 30kb) the issue on the network level is the number of connections and
CPU, on the server side it's IO and FSB

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 08:55, Akshay Kumar  wrote:

> The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a long
> way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances in
> AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.
>
> Just just use the South Africa AWS region.
>
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 3:35 PM Ken Gilmour  wrote:
>
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small
>> POP in Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if
>> you could help guide me in the right direction for research?
>>
>> The challenges:
>>
>>1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as
>>opposed to serving smaller numbers of larger files).
>>2. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full
>>capacity of each server, all the time.
>>3. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
>>4. We can initially only have one POP
>>
>> This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old
>> provider", the requirements are very different.
>>
>> Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
>> (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa
>> that can serve most of the region?
>>
>> "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no legal
>> restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms) to the
>> rest of Africa.
>>
>> Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like
>> something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle
>> East will be deployed after Africa.
>>
>> I hope this is the right place to ask.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Ken
>>
>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Ken Gilmour]

Bingo

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 09:30, Christopher Morrow 
wrote:

> Isn't the OP really asking here (not to have their selection of
> platform wrangled..):
>   "Where should I target my search: ZA only? is there anywhere else
> worth dropping my request?"
>
> and:
>   "Are there likely providers of solid colo aside from
> seacom/tinka-net or workonline/ben-net ?"
>
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 11:12 AM Akshay Kumar via NANOG 
> wrote:
> >
> > My bad. They announced that Oct 2018 so I figured they'd be close to it
> now. Yeah turns out it's mid 2020 :-(
> >
> >
> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-aws-region-in-south-africa/
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:02 PM Chris Knipe 
> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:57 PM Akshay Kumar via NANOG 
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a
> long way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances
> in AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.
> >>>
> >>> Just just use the South Africa AWS region.
> >>>
> >>
> >> ^^ You had me for a second there.  AWS ain't operational yet in South
> Africa.  Sometime 2020/2021 only.
> >>
>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Ken Gilmour]

Thanks for all the replies! (really fast!)

The requirement for Bare Metal is very specific. Dealing with high speed
large files is very different to dealing with high volume small files. We
regularly encounter bottlenecks at the FSB and at the IO level. Even things
like RAID slows us down, so we have to squeeze every iota of power out of
the servers that we can. Plus, most of our customers in Africa use our free
version so cost savings are also important, and so is accessibility.

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 at 09:10, Bryan Fields  wrote:

> On 7/16/19 10:55 AM, Akshay Kumar via NANOG wrote:
> > The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a
> long
> > way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances in
> > AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.
>
> Well the man wants bare metal, and while there's arguments for and against
> it,
> it's what he wants to buy :)
>
> That said, I'm one of those guys that likes owing my own hypervisor, don't
> need to worry about the side channel/memory/OOO execution attacks from
> rogue
> VM's if it's only my VM's on it.  Plus AWS ain't cheap either.
>
> --
> Bryan Fields
>
> 727-409-1194 - Voice
> http://bryanfields.net
>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Mike Hammett]

The cloud isn't always the right decision for the end customer. In many cases, 
it's the worst decision. 




- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 

Midwest Internet Exchange 

The Brothers WISP 

- Original Message -

From: "Akshay Kumar via NANOG"  
To: "Ken Gilmour"  
Cc: "North Group"  
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2019 9:55:12 AM 
Subject: Re: Colo in Africa 


The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a long way 
and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances in AWS if 
you really need them with 100Gbps. 


Just just use the South Africa AWS region. 



On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 3:35 PM Ken Gilmour < ken.gilm...@gmail.com > wrote: 



Hi Folks, 


I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small POP in 
Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if you could 
help guide me in the right direction for research? 


The challenges: 


1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as opposed to 
serving smaller numbers of larger files). 
2. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full 
capacity of each server, all the time. 
3. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa 
4. We can initially only have one POP 


This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old provider", 
the requirements are very different. 


Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers 
(something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa that 
can serve most of the region? 


"Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no legal 
restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms) to the 
rest of Africa. 


Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like 
something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle East 
will be deployed after Africa. 


I hope this is the right place to ask. 



Thanks! 


Ken 

Re: Colo in Africa

[Christopher Morrow]

Isn't the OP really asking here (not to have their selection of
platform wrangled..):
  "Where should I target my search: ZA only? is there anywhere else
worth dropping my request?"

and:
  "Are there likely providers of solid colo aside from
seacom/tinka-net or workonline/ben-net ?"

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 11:12 AM Akshay Kumar via NANOG  wrote:
>
> My bad. They announced that Oct 2018 so I figured they'd be close to it now. 
> Yeah turns out it's mid 2020 :-(
>
> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-aws-region-in-south-africa/
>
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:02 PM Chris Knipe  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:57 PM Akshay Kumar via NANOG  
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a long 
>>> way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances in 
>>> AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.
>>>
>>> Just just use the South Africa AWS region.
>>>
>>
>> ^^ You had me for a second there.  AWS ain't operational yet in South 
>> Africa.  Sometime 2020/2021 only.
>>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Akshay Kumar via NANOG]

Thanks for chiming in but his reason for can't be cloud was, "We use the
full capacity of each server, all the time." That ain't good reason.

They do have baremetal servers like I pointed out. We use them when for
cases where we need access to perf counters.

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:10 PM Bryan Fields  wrote:

> On 7/16/19 10:55 AM, Akshay Kumar via NANOG wrote:
> > The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a
> long
> > way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances in
> > AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.
>
> Well the man wants bare metal, and while there's arguments for and against
> it,
> it's what he wants to buy :)
>
> That said, I'm one of those guys that likes owing my own hypervisor, don't
> need to worry about the side channel/memory/OOO execution attacks from
> rogue
> VM's if it's only my VM's on it.  Plus AWS ain't cheap either.
>
> --
> Bryan Fields
>
> 727-409-1194 - Voice
> http://bryanfields.net
>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Akshay Kumar via NANOG]

My bad. They announced that Oct 2018 so I figured they'd be close to it
now. Yeah turns out it's mid 2020 :-(

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-aws-region-in-south-africa/

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:02 PM Chris Knipe  wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:57 PM Akshay Kumar via NANOG 
> wrote:
>
>> The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a
>> long way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances
>> in AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.
>>
>> Just just use the South Africa AWS region.
>>
>>
> ^^ You had me for a second there.  AWS ain't operational yet in South
> Africa.  Sometime 2020/2021 only.
>
>

Re: Colo in Africa

[Bryan Fields]

On 7/16/19 10:55 AM, Akshay Kumar via NANOG wrote:
> The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a long
> way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances in
> AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.

Well the man wants bare metal, and while there's arguments for and against it,
it's what he wants to buy :)

That said, I'm one of those guys that likes owing my own hypervisor, don't
need to worry about the side channel/memory/OOO execution attacks from rogue
VM's if it's only my VM's on it.  Plus AWS ain't cheap either.

-- 
Bryan Fields

727-409-1194 - Voice
http://bryanfields.net

RE: Colo in Africa

[Phil Lavin]

> just use the South Africa AWS region

They don't have a Region there at present - only an Edge location. I believe 
one is in the works for launch next year.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Chris Knipe]

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:57 PM Akshay Kumar via NANOG 
wrote:

> The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a long
> way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances in
> AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.
>
> Just just use the South Africa AWS region.
>
>
^^ You had me for a second there.  AWS ain't operational yet in South
Africa.  Sometime 2020/2021 only.

Re: Colo in Africa

[Akshay Kumar via NANOG]

The 2nd requirement seems artificial. The new hypervisors have come a long
way and the overhead is minimal. Also you can run bare metal instances in
AWS if you really need them with 100Gbps.

Just just use the South Africa AWS region.

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 3:35 PM Ken Gilmour  wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> I work for a Security Analytics org and we're looking to build a small POP
> in Africa. I am pretty clueless about the region so I was wondering if you
> could help guide me in the right direction for research?
>
> The challenges:
>
>1. Network needs to be able to receive millions of small PPS (as
>opposed to serving smaller numbers of larger files).
>2. Can't be cloud (need bare metal servers / colo). We use the full
>capacity of each server, all the time.
>3. Must have good connectivity to most of the rest of Africa
>4. We can initially only have one POP
>
> This is not like a normal website that we can just host on "any old
> provider", the requirements are very different.
>
> Is there a good location where we could either rent bare metal servers
> (something like Internap - preferred) or colocate servers within Africa
> that can serve most of the region?
>
> "Good" is defined as an area with stable connectivity and power, no legal
> restrictions on things like encryption, and good latency (sub 100ms) to the
> rest of Africa.
>
> Our two closest POPs are in Singapore and The Netherlands, so I'd like
> something closer to the middle that can serve the rest of Africa. Middle
> East will be deployed after Africa.
>
> I hope this is the right place to ask.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Ken
>