Bandwidth Optimization

Optimising Internet Bandwidth in Developing Country Higher Education

2. The need for bandwidth optimization

Part of INASP’s work enables access to online academic and scientific publications. For these programmes to be effective, the institutions targeted need to have a usable Internet link. Several universities in this study have an Internet connection of between 512 Kbps and 1 Mbps (as at May 2003).1 This is about as much as a DSL connection (512 Kbps to 1.544 Mbps), which is typically used to connect a single household in the West to the Internet. Bristol University, by contrast, has a 2.5 Gbps link; which is 5120 times as much as the University of Dar es Salaam has. Students and researchers in the West tend to take free, fast access to the Internet for granted. While it is not necessary to have very fast access to the Internet for it to be usable, there is a limit below which it becomes frustrating. Usability studies show that an average Web page should load within 10 seconds; if the text starts loading immediately, followed by the graphics, load times of up to 39 seconds can be acceptable. Unfortunately, proxy servers (described in this document and in the glossary), cause a delay and then the page loads all at once. As will be seen in this report, it is essential to implement a proxy server. Therefore, a typical page-load time of around 10 seconds could be a target for IT departments. Usability is important for researchers because of the nature of Web searches. A user might have to load many pages and scan through them before finding the right document. If each ‘false lead’ takes a long time to load, Web searches become a frustrating experience.

2.1 Participants in the study

The Universities of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Bristol (United Kingdom), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Makerere (Uganda) and Moratuwa (Sri Lanka) were asked to supply information about their networks and optimization efforts. Bristol was included in order to compare the others with a...