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Cuba's Internet Routing Is Messed Up

Posted by timothy on from the spirit-of-fidel-lives dept.

Internet access in Cuba has gotten far better in the last year, thanks in large part to thawing relations between Cuba's government and the U.S. In the case of a censorship-heavy, technology-impaired regime, though, "better" doesn't necessarily mean good. Northwestern engineering professor Fabián E. Bustamante and graduate student Zachary Bischof decided to quantify the performance of Cuban internet connections, and found them "perhaps even worse than they expected," with regards to routing in particular. Reader TheSync writes with this excerpt: During their study, Bustamante and Bischof found that when a person in Havana searched for a topic on Google, for example, the request traveled through the marine cable to Venezuela, then through another marine cable to the United States, and finally landed at a Google server in Dallas, Texas. When the search results traveled back, it went to Miami, Florida, up to the satellite, and then back to Cuba. While the information out of Cuba took 60-70 milliseconds, it took a whopping 270 milliseconds to travel back.

3 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Censorship? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why the censorship tag if the story is neither about American nor Cuban censorship? Have they verified the delay can be blamed on the NSA?

  2. Re:OMG 270 ms by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OMG 270 ms! How can the poor Cubans wait that long for a response from a search? Maybe they eat a sandwich during that time?

    If you're a really quick eater.... seriously I know people with satellite connections with ping times like that. Inconvienient? Yes. Censorship? Hell no. If you want to do competitive FPS, you should probably find another ISP. But for generic information reception, processing and dissemination per the UN charter of human rights you're fine.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  3. Rest of Worlds is messed up Cuba looks fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From the description Cuba out is pretty good. It is the return trip that goes via satellite. So it is not Cuba's routing that is messed up, but rather the rest of the worlds routing to Cuba which is messed up.

    Going via Venezuela might be the biggest cable they have. I am pretty sure the is no Havana, Miami direct cable.