Revealing Causes of Poor Internet Performance in Nigeria: A Content Hosting Perspective

Abstract

Internet Performance indices in Nigeria reveal that end-user’s perceived latency does not corroborate the huge investments in internet infrastructure. Thus, this study aims to expose possible performance constraints from a content hosting perspective. Apart from evaluating the origin and location of web content which Nigerians frequently access, the effect of local/remote content hosting on end-user’s latency is analyzed. Paris-traceroutes were conducted to the top fifty websites and the measurement output was analyzed using geolocation tools and python scripts to determine the websites’ origin and hosting countries, characterize latencies and calculate the geographic distances between the vantage point and each web server. The relationship between geographic distance and latency was analyzed using a scatter plot. 22% of the web servers was hosted in Nigeria while all the “Purely Nigerian” websites which we successfully conducted Paris-traceroute to, had their web servers located outside the country. Geographic distance and latency correlated positively with a coefficient of 0.7065. The study contributes to existing body of knowledge as it reveals the behavior of indigenous content providers in hosting content abroad as well as the impact such has on end-user perceived latency while providing recommendations on how to improve service performance from a content hosting perspective.