About MIRA

This project is a joint initiative between AFRINIC and the Internet Society. The aim is to:

1. Collect and analyze empirical data to determine current levels of Internet resilience in African countries.
2. Improve Internet measurement infrastructure in Africa by increasing the number of measurement vantage points that are active in Africa.
3. Present the data for users at all levels (policymakers, engineers, network operators, decision-makers, Internet users, etc.).

Learn more about the Internet Society's Measuring the Internet project and the AFRINIC Internet Measurement program.

Read about the MIRA project overview.

Measuring Internet Resilience in Africa

Internet resilience is the ability of a network to maintain an acceptable level of service at all times. The Internet is a “network of networks” and plays a critical role in society. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of reliable Internet connectivity. However, not all countries have Internet infrastructure that is stable enough to provide an acceptable level of service to consumers In Africa, Internet resilience has not been sufficiently measured to date. So, as part of the Internet Society’s Measuring the Internet project, we want to find out how well African countries cope with Internet outages or disruptions and how resilient the networks in Africa really are.

We’re going to seek these answers through the Measuring Internet Resilience in Africa (MIRA) project by evaluating the capability of a country to provide continuous, stable, and reliable Internet connectivity.

How will the MIRA project measure Internet resilience in Africa?

The MIRA project is a joint initiative between African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) and the Internet Society. The project will use Internet measurements gathered by specially provisioned measurement devices (called MIRA pods) located in different African countries.

Who can use the data from the MIRA project?

The data presented will be freely available to all and can be used by anyone to gain insight into the availability and resilience of the African Internet, including:

• Network operators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) seeking to improve their services.
• National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) who define the legal and operational environments for the Internet.
• Researchers and engineers aiming to quantify and improve Internet resilience and performance in Africa.
• Internet users, researchers, and engineers seeking to learn more about the Internet landscape in Africa.

What will be measured?

Internet resilience encompasses many underlying components, ranging from the resilience of physical Internet infrastructure (such as undersea or terrestrial cables) to market resilience and quality of service (QoS), which includes performance, uptime and available bandwidth.

As part of the MIRA project, we will measure:

• The availability and diversity of the physical Internet infrastructure.
• The quality of service of the network from the user’s perspective.
• The availability and efficiency of the peering infrastructure, including the number of IXPs and ISPs.
• The resilience and performance of the DNS ecosystem.

What has been done so far?

MIRA is already collecting – or preparing to collect – throughput and latency measurements in Benin, Burkina Faso, Congo DRC, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tunisia, and South Africa using measurement data from a third party, M-Lab. We’ll shortly add data from the RIPE NCC’s RIPE Atlas. These measurements are being carried out by dedicated devices (Raspberry Pis that we call ‘MIRA pods’) in these countries.

Where will the data be available?

The data will soon be available on the Internet Society’s Pulse platform so that everyone can easily find the data they need about the state of Internet resilience in the first set of countries in which we’re carrying out measurements.

How can I participate?

To get a robust overview of the Internet’s resiliency in Africa, it’s important to increase the number of vantage points i.e. the networks from where measurements can be carried out. We are slowly rolling out the measurement infrastructure and will need help from volunteers who can host lightweight probes (the Raspberry Pi MIRA Pods mentioned above) on their home networks. The probes need to be in-home networks in order to capture the real-world experiences of Internet users.

Where can I find out more about MIRA and how to participate?

If you would like to host a MIRA probe on your network, please contact us at pulse@isoc.org for more details.

You can find out more about the project in the Internet Resilience section on the Internet Society Pulse platform.