Hello,
A friend of mine is working on one of the committees for next years
Supercomputing conference and noticed that, in the past, they'd had
participants from most continents but none from Africa. Does anyone
know of a good organization/group/etc which we could spam with our
conference notice and request for participation?
Thanks!
Eric 
PS: For those who are curious, here's part of the write-up for the SC Global
portion of next years Supercomputing conference:
Have you tried AFNOG ?
They have a mailing list
AfNOG Mailing List
The AfNOG mailing list is established to provide a forum for the exchange of technical information and the discussion of specific implementation issues that require cooperation among African network service providers.
To subscribe, send an email message to majordomo@afnog.org with 'subscribe afnog' (without the quotes) as text in the body of the message.
Regards
Marshall Eubanks
Hello,
A friend of mine is working on one of the committees for next years
Supercomputing conference and noticed that, in the past, they'd had
participants from most continents but none from Africa. Does anyone
know of a good organization/group/etc which we could spam with our
conference notice and request for participation?
Would that friend be so kind as to name more than a handful places in Africa
with IP connectivity (multinational companies do not count).
Alex
>
> Hello,
>
> A friend of mine is working on one of the committees for next years
> Supercomputing conference and noticed that, in the past, they'd had
> participants from most continents but none from Africa. Does anyone
> know of a good organization/group/etc which we could spam with our
> conference notice and request for participation?Would that friend be so kind as to name more than a handful places in Africa
with IP connectivity (multinational companies do not count).
Most major cities in most countries have at a minimum ip dialup services,
in major metropolitan centers there are now large numbers of wireless
isps as well...
A more interesting and germane question is how big is the number of
people/organizations in africa with hpc applications and how do your reach
them, since that is the subset of folks interested in attending super
computing.
Would that friend be so kind as to name more than a handful places in Africa
with IP connectivity (multinational companies do not count).
while we're not chasing elephants off the runway, or killing
lions/tigers/each other on the sandroads, some people actually spend their
time in the confines of a building of sorts earning a living. quite often
this even involves the internet, although this might change if our
government continues the way they have been for the last few months.
But there's this huge growth industry in Nigerian-scam spam. 
(Sorry, I couldn't resist...)
One thing to keep in mind is that people that reside in Africa
are large/huge prepaid GSM users. Take that and apply it to mobile
data services over cell phones (3G and the likes) and I think you
lend yourselves to interesting things.
  Doing bluetooth or IR to your desktop/laptop from your phone
to get 128k+ speeds where there is no wired infrastructure but
cellular will do interesting things to transform internet usage
in these places and others that have skipped the wired telephony
phase of "development".
  Take that in conjunction with the talks at nanog about ipv6,
pigs and rockets strapped on and you will start to see some of the
most interesting developments yet in the internet.
  - Jared
Would that friend be so kind as to name more than a handful places in
Africa with IP connectivity (multinational companies do not count).
fyi, all countries in africa are ip connected. dunno how big your
hands are, but there are over 50 countries in africa.
randy
Would that friend be so kind as to name more than a handful places in
Africa with IP connectivity (multinational companies do not count).
Hi Alex,
Access beyond the capital cities varies, but as several folks have
pointed out, there is IP connectivity to all countries in the region, run
by local ISPs, telcos, and universities, etc. Eritrea was the last
country on the continent to bring up an IP link - in November 2000.
Tunisia was the first to connect to the global Internet in March 1991,
followed by South Africa later that year, etc. A few relatively recent
updates, from engineers we work with in the respective countries...
http://www.nsrc.org/db/lookup/operation=lookup-report/ID=1014648054895:488740490/fromPage=UG
http://www.nsrc.org/db/lookup/operation=lookup-report/ID=1011802447635:489025450/fromPage=CD
http://www.nsrc.org/db/lookup/operation=lookup-report/ID=1007087598617:489022638/fromPage=GN
http://www.nsrc.org/db/lookup/operation=lookup-report/ID=1037285984211:488846420/fromPage=TN
http://www.nsrc.org/db/lookup/operation=lookup-report/ID=1022602245849:488913539/fromPage=TZ
http://www.nsrc.org/db/lookup/operation=lookup-report/ID=1037635414317:489052248/fromPage=MU
http://nsrc.org/AFRICA/ML/ml-topo-janvier-2001.gif
http://www.nsrc.org/AFRICA/GH/ncs-topo-jan-2002.gif
etc.
Steve Huter
> Would that friend be so kind as to name more than a handful places in
> Africa with IP connectivity (multinational companies do not count).fyi, all countries in africa are ip connected. dunno how big your
hands are, but there are over 50 countries in africa.
Pardon me for not counting "allocated" addresses as IP connectivity.
Alex
fyi, all countries in africa are ip connected. dunno how big your
hands are, but there are over 50 countries in africa.Pardon me for not counting "allocated" addresses as IP connectivity.
You're pardoned, but just barely. Try some traceroutes, and you'll
find that every country in Africa does indeed have some kind of IP
connectivity.
There seem to be a lot of ISPs who get little slices of IP from
satellite carriers like emperion.net in Denmark. Much of the 419 spam
I get from Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and other west African
countries originates in cybercafes with satellite links.
There seem to be a lot of ISPs who get little slices of IP from
satellite carriers like emperion.net in Denmark. Much of the 419 spam
I get from Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and other west African
countries originates in cybercafes with satellite links.
i don't know if I've ever actually received 1 of those spam messages from
a host inside Nigeria
About 45% of the nigerian scams I receive originate directly from nigerian
IPs, another 45% originate from a2000.nl in the netherlands, and the last
10% from lagos.
-Dan
The FBI unit working these cases will be happy to confirm most do
originate in Africa even if the money ultimately ends up elsewhere.
http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/fraudschemes.htm#nigerian
Best regards,
i don't know if I've ever actually received 1 of those spam messages from
a host inside Nigeria
wow, i seem to get several per day. would you like some, i can setup an exploder
for some of my spam if anyones interested? 
Steve
> i don't know if I've ever actually received 1 of those spam messages from
> a host inside Nigeriawow, i seem to get several per day. would you like some, i can setup an exploder
for some of my spam if anyones interested?
and they're all actually sent/relayed through a host in Nigeria? my first
few were, none that I received after that were. alot from south africa,
and a few other parts, but no more from Nigeria
>> fyi, all countries in africa are ip connected. dunno how big your
>> hands are, but there are over 50 countries in africa.
>
>Pardon me for not counting "allocated" addresses as IP connectivity.You're pardoned, but just barely. Try some traceroutes, and you'll
find that every country in Africa does indeed have some kind of IP
connectivity.
Try finding some IP connectivity while in Nigeria. You would be
hard-pressed, even if you are willing to pay enormous $$.
There seem to be a lot of ISPs who get little slices of IP from
satellite carriers like emperion.net in Denmark. Much of the 419 spam
I get from Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and other west African
countries originates in cybercafes with satellite links.
Correction... *very* *few* satellite links.
Alex
Correction... *very* *few* satellite links.
actually, some countries have _mostly_ sat links for atleast their intl
connectivity. and very small links at that. some countries, where allowed
to, run vsat radio or microwave for everything from backbone links to
local loop for customers.
if you're bored take a look at the archives for isp-sat
Try finding some IP connectivity while in Nigeria. You would be
hard-pressed, even if you are willing to pay enormous $$.
I get lots and lots and lots of spam from cybercafes located in Nigeria,
as well as apologies from both the cafes and the upstream networks. I
realize this doesn't fit with your preconceptions, so I'll drop it here.
Be sure not to look at
http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Africa/Nigeria/Business_and_Economy/Internet/
or you might learn about at least ten ISPs operating in Nigeria.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, John R. Levine, Sewer Commissioner
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.