Community networks have been proposed by many networking experts and researchers as a way to bridge connectivity gaps in rural and remote areas of the world. Many community networks are built with low-capacity computing devices and low-capacity links. Such community networks are examples of low resource networks. The design and implementation of computer networks using limited hardware and software resources has been studied extensively in the past, but scheduling strategies for conducting measurements on these networks remains an important area to be explored. In this study, the design of a Quality of Service monitoring system is proposed, focusing on performance of scheduling of network measurement jobs in a low-resource network. In this paper, we present a testbed for conducting performance evaluation of two measurement scheduling algorithms and present an analysis of trends in their performance with varying experiment profiles.

This poster presents iNethi, a community wireless network deployed in a peri-urban township of Cape Town, South Africa. Initial usage clearly indicates a demand for Internet-based external services and, to a lesser extent, local services. We focus on the initial months of our deployment, and interaction with locally installed INethi services, as well as the impact of access to the Internet. We present data from our traffic logs, captured during a period of six months. We observed that a large proportion of data is being consumed by software or antivirus updates. The data collected and trends observed will allow iNethi operators to make necessary adjustment to the networks.

The Internet in Africa is evolving rapidly, yet remains significantly behind other regions in terms of performance and ubiquity of access. This clearly has negative consequences for the residents of Africa, but also has implications for organisations designing future networked technologies that might see deployment in the region. This paper presents a measurement campaign methodology to explore the current state of the African Internet. Using vantage points across the continent, we perform the first large-scale mapping of inter-country delays in Africa. Our analysis reveals a number of clusters, where countries have built up low delay interconnectivity, dispelling the myth that intra-communications in Africa are universally poor. Unfortunately, this does not extend to the remainder of the continent, which typically suffers from excessively high delays, often exceeding 300ms. We find that in many cases it is faster to reach European or North American networks that those in other regions of Africa. By mapping the internetwork topology, we identify a number of shortcomings in the infrastructure, most notably an excessive reliance on intercontinental transit providers.