Unusual Request Location - Ethiopia

[HalfEatenPie]

Howdy folks!  

Due to some changes to help one of my colleagues, I'm looking for a VPS that is in Ethiopia or has a good connectivity within Ethiopia.  

There's two ways I can go about this.  I'd like to request 2 different options I can take and I'd like to see what's available for each.  KVM/Xen HVM Preferred.  

Option 1 (Minimum Specs):

• 1 CPU
• 128 MB RAM
• 50 GB HDD
• At minimum 400 GB Bandwidth on 100 Mbit (not dedicated, simply burst)

Option 2 (Minimum Specs):

• 2 CPU
• 512 MB RAM
• 2.5 TB HDD
• At Minimum 6 TB Bandwidth on 1 Gbit

Cost is pretty much as minimal as possible since it's an unexpected requirement for our project.  If anyone knows any good offers or good alternatives (basically file hosting that has a good download speed to Ethiopia) would be awesome.  

Thanks! 

 

[MannDude]

Good luck... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Ethiopia

Ethiopia has the second lowest Internet penetration rate in sub-Saharan Africa (only Sierra Leone’s is lower) and is currently attempting a broad expansion of access throughout the country.[1] These efforts have been hampered by the largely rural makeup of the Ethiopian population and the government’s refusal to permit any privatization of the telecommunications market.[1] Only 360,000 people had Internet access in 2008, a penetration rate of 0.4%.[2] That number has since grown to about 1.8 million, or about 1.9% of the population.[3]

As far as datacenters go? Unsure if any are currently IN Ethiopia: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=datacenters+in+ethiopia

Good luck.

 

[William]

haha, no, that won't happen - 1Mbit BW (~330GB) costs around 40$ (yes, USD, not some strange African currency) so your request would be easily 80$ for BW alone, count in that Ethopia is under UN sanctions (for being repressive police state dictatorship, one of the worst in the world, usually ranked on the same place as North Korea) and you will pay a LOT for old hardware (even worse than Iran). 1Gbit is unheard of (and probably will be for the next 10 years), most ISPs work on 16-32Mbit sat uplinks.

Check if ISP has good connectivity to South Africa or Kenya, but this is highly unlikely as well - Most traffic goes to Portugal or Spain, so Spain/France is the best solution.

 

[drmike]

Carrier pigeon.

These folks seem familiar with Ethiopia:

http://www.technobros.net/

There is a data center that was announced for this year somewhere there. Snippet here about that:

http://www.2merkato.com/news/alerts/3019-southwest-technologies-to-launch-data-center-in-ethiopia

 

[MannDude]

I am curious though, why does this need to be specifically in Ethiopia? That's such a strange request.

 

[IntroVex-Kamran]

There are some providers who have nodes in South Africa and many that have nodes in India. I'm not sure how good the connection would be though. South Africa

I'm not sure of a good Indian VPS provider, I'm sure some googling would yield some decent results though.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

haha, no, that won't happen - 1Mbit BW (~330GB) costs around 40$ (yes, USD, not some strange African currency) so your request would be easily 80$ for BW alone, count in that Ethopia is under UN sanctions (for being repressive police state dictatorship, one of the worst in the world, usually ranked on the same place as North Korea) and you will pay a LOT for old hardware (even worse than Iran). 1Gbit is unheard of (and probably will be for the next 10 years), most ISPs work on 16-32Mbit sat uplinks.

Check if ISP has good connectivity to South Africa or Kenya, but this is highly unlikely as well - Most traffic goes to Portugal or Spain, so Spain/France is the best solution.

Roger that yeah I figured enough.  We do have access to an academic level uplink but I figured why not just try taking a shot in the dark and try to improve conditions on my side as well.  While academic network infrastructure is fantastic in the US, Europe, and Asia, I'm not sure how it is in Africa.  

Carrier pigeon.

These folks seem familiar with Ethiopia:

http://www.technobros.net/

There is a data center that was announced for this year somewhere there. Snippet here about that:

http://www.2merkato.com/news/alerts/3019-southwest-technologies-to-launch-data-center-in-ethiopia

Yeah I saw that earlier when I was Googling around.  However since this is short-term (maximum 4 months) I was preferring a more month-to-month option.  

There are some providers who have nodes in South Africa and many that have nodes in India. I'm not sure how good the connection would be though. South Africa

I'm not sure of a good Indian VPS provider, I'm sure some googling would yield some decent results though.

Yeah I was looking at South Africa as well, however since most of Africa's network is routed through Europe, a cheaper alternative will probably be to load up an OVH or upload to HubiC and go from there.  India would probably be a terrible location (my own opinion anyways) since the fastest network would be through submarine cables, and submarine cable bandwidth is much more expensive than overland cables (talking budget-wise).  

I am curious though, why does this need to be specifically in Ethiopia? That's such a strange request.

Because Reasons!  

 

[telephone]

Because Reasons!  

PORN!!! ᶘᵒᴥᵒᶅ

 

[HalfEatenPie]

Because Reasons!  

PORN!!! ᶘᵒᴥᵒᶅ

Freedom of Speech and all that stuff!!!

Remember kids, the internet was made for PORN!!!

Kidding though.  Totally not related to porn.  Mostly related to sharing some scientific data with some colleagues in Ethiopia who have problems downloading large files from our servers.  I wanted to service them locally in hopes to increase the rate at which they can download our data and finally get to using it.  I'm also theoretically supposed to be in Ethiopia in September (for work) and wouldn't mind having a VPN node for a week while I'm there.  

 

[DomainBop]

 India would probably be a terrible location (my own opinion anyways) since the fastest network would be through submarine cables, and submarine cable bandwidth is much more expensive than overland cables (talking budget-wise).  

Africa...overland cables between countries? LOL, next you're going to tell me that South America has overland cables between countries.

India isn't the best location, and it's not because of submarine cables.  Infrastructure in India (starting with the power grid)...sucks in comparison to even Brazil.  I've had/have VPS's in Pune (Leapswitch/Prometeus) and Chennai (HostVirtual)

http://www.technobros.net/

They do satellite installs in Ethiopia but I don't think hosting is in Africa.  Company is registered in Australia.

Check if ISP has good connectivity to South Africa or Kenya

South Africa: Mweb (and companies like VPS.co.za which use them) have good connectivity to several nearby countries like Zimbabwe (see the traceroute comparisons here) but Ethiopia isn't one of them.  Everything  from South Africa to Ethiopia seems to be going through London.

Kenya:  haven't tested but I'd be willing to bet it's the same story as South Africa

Saudi Arabia (EIG submarine cable to Dijibouti has a landing point here): NashirNet is cheap and is good for locations within Saudi Arabia, but otherwise NashirNet falls in the same category as the Edis' Chile location: useless if you want to reach viewers in nearby countries.

Egypt (another EIG landing point): routes up through London and infrastructure is very unreliable in Egypt.

If you need a test IP in Ethiopia use 213.55.98.19 (Ethiopian gov't web portal, hosted in Addis Ababa)

TL;DR: Spain, Portugal, France, UK: probably best bets..

 wouldn't mind having a VPN node for a week while I'm there. 

The Ethiopian government would probably mind you having a VPN node there.  They spend a lot of time trying to block VPNs and TOR.

 

[rds100]

If they are having problems downloading your large files maybe try distributing those files via torrents?

 

 

[MannDude]

How large of files are we talking here? If it's a colleague in Ethiopia, and one that is trusted, is it possible that you can ship them a RaspberryPi that is already configured to be accessed by you (somehow) remotely? You could then bare the slowness of the upload from your end and since the Pi would be local to them, they could just pull the file over the local network instead of over the internet?

 

[HalfEatenPie]

How large of files are we talking here? If it's a colleague in Ethiopia, and one that is trusted, is it possible that you can ship them a RaspberryPi that is already configured to be accessed by you (somehow) remotely? You could then bare the slowness of the upload from your end and since the Pi would be local to them, they could just pull the file over the local network instead of over the internet?

 Uncompressed, the file is 2.4 TB big.  Compressed... gzip is 41 GB.  Problem is that regardless my colleague will need access to it in an uncompressed format in order to use it.  

Sending it via a Raspberry Pi... yeah I don't see that going well.  Either way they're not really too tech literate (as in I'm not willing to send them a raspberry Pi, have them configure the network side of it and deal with it that way because if a problem ever happens, they'll probably end up blaming me and then more time would be needed to try and fix the problem.  It's much easier to keep it within an environment I can manage and take care of remotely).  

I think I'll be sticking with my current setup then.  Due to the limited resources we have available I guess this request was definitely a bit too over the top.  

 

[rds100]

Is it one time download, or they will need to constantly redownload it?

Maybe just DHL a USB flash drive with the compressed file. Or DHL a HDD with the uncompressd file. No idea how much that would cost.

edit: replace DHL with UPS or FedEx or whatever you prefer.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

Is it one time download, or they will need to constantly redownload it?

Maybe just DHL a USB flash drive with the compressed file. Or DHL a HDD with the uncompressd file. No idea how much that would cost.

edit: replace DHL with UPS or FedEx or whatever you prefer.

More data will be coming as time goes on.  So while this will be a temporary system it will more than likely be reused down the line.

And yep physically delivering the file is an option (like I said, I'm possibly going to Ethiopia in September so I can just hand it to them myself), however I'm looking for solutions/alternatives that gets them the data faster instead of waiting a month.  

 

[OSTKCabal]

Considered giving OVH a holler? I'm not a fan of them, but it'd be cheap and worth at least a try since they're in France, and France has come up in this thread multiple times.

OVH has a lot of their bandwidth going through Tata Communications, and lucky for people in Africa, Tata Communications retains a heavy presence in that part of the world. You might have some decent luck with it.

 

[ModyDev]

maybe you can try the closest locations

KSA - http://www.nashirnet.net/services/vps/

LinkDC - Egypt http://linkdatacenter.net/ProductsServices/VirtualDedicatedServers.aspx

 

[HalfEatenPie]

Considered giving OVH a holler? I'm not a fan of them, but it'd be cheap and worth at least a try since they're in France, and France has come up in this thread multiple times.

OVH has a lot of their bandwidth going through Tata Communications, and lucky for people in Africa, Tata Communications retains a heavy presence in that part of the world. You might have some decent luck with it.

Already wrote that as a potential solution to the problem.  Thanks for bring it back up though.  

 

[OSTKCabal]

Considered giving OVH a holler? I'm not a fan of them, but it'd be cheap and worth at least a try since they're in France, and France has come up in this thread multiple times.

OVH has a lot of their bandwidth going through Tata Communications, and lucky for people in Africa, Tata Communications retains a heavy presence in that part of the world. You might have some decent luck with it.

Already wrote that as a potential solution to the problem.  Thanks for bring it back up though.  

Must have missed that. Hey! I tried!

 

[iWF-Jacob]

If you need a test IP in Ethiopia use 213.55.98.19 (Ethiopian

 gov't web portal, hosted in Addis Ababa)

Should that be a pingable/traceable address? I'm having traces timeout around 197.254.194.x (which appears to be in Sudan) and am unable to ping your 213 address whatsoever. Anyone found another address to trace, cus' I'm having no luck whatsoever.