Connectivity Providers Database

Date Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 8:34 AM From: Estifanos Medhin <eninno@yahoo.com> To: mlizarza@darkwing.uoregon.edu Subject: RE: Eritrea and the Internet Dear Dolores, The current Internet status in Eritrea is as follows. INTERNET IN ERITREA: There are four commercial ISPs in Eritrea. The University of Asmara has now direct connection to the Internet starting early this year. The four ISPs are Tfanus Enterprises(www.tfanus.com.er), Ewan Technology Solutions (www.ewan.com.er), Computer Technology Solutions (www.cts.com.er) and Telecommunication Services of Eritrea(TSE) (www.tse.com.er)and the University of Asmara (www.uoa.edu.er). The upstream provider is TSE. The external connectivity was through Lyman Brother since the start of the Internet connection, November 2000 up to March 2002 with bandwidth of 128k incoming and 128k outgoing, shared among all ISPs. In February a new contract was signed with Warsun International for external connectivity and upgrade of bandwidth to 1M incoming and 512k outgoing and the connection was started in March. There is still a need to upgrade to more bandwidth. With the Lyman connection we had one class C IP address 216.147.130.0 divided as follows: NOC 16 ISPs: TFANUS 32 EWAN 32 CTS 32 TSE 104 University: UOA 8 Secondary Cities: Massawa 8 TSE-Massawa 8 Keren 0 Decemhare 8 Medefehra 8 Since this address belongs to the provider we had to change new IP address with the new provider. Thus Warsun agreed to provide provider independent IP blocks of 217.146.x.x. An interesting discussion raised by Craig Harmer that this IP block was provider aggregate and not provider independent and the Eritrean ISPs would be obliged to change address if they would not receive transit from Warsun. It was a long discussion and finally Warsun agreed to provide a new block which hadn't given any assignments out of 213.191.160/19, in a condition that starting at the beginning and using this block for Eritrea and avoiding using it (but not reserving it) for other assignments until they use all the remaining 217.146.0.0/19 block, and/or that if Eritrea fills up the whole /20 block. Hence, Eritrea now is using IP address in 213.191.160/20 block. Other four secondary cities are also connected to internet throught microwave. BANDWIDTH COSTS: The ISPs buy bandwidth according to their demand from the 1M. The cost of bandwidth is USD1000.00 per 128k per month which is high cost. DIFFUSION OF THE INTERNET IN THE COUNTRY: The number of Internet users is increasing, specially the young people. There are about 20 to 25 Internet Cafes in Asmara, the capital city and few in secondary cities, connected to their provider through wireless or leased line. And there are people still asking for license. Several organizations and government offices have 24 hours connection my the above means. Many people use internet to communicate with their relatives and friends abroad, with chat and e-mail. There are also good number of people who use it for research and references, specially university students. Best regards, Medhin. Estifanos Medhin <eninno@yahoo.com>