Internet performance toward open access content

Details

Supervisors

Cristel PELSSER

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences informatiques, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Open access content is scientific and research content that is freely accessible. It is important to be able to access it because it enables knowledge to be disseminated to a wide audience, particularly in developing countries. The aim of this master's thesis is to measure access to different open access directories on a global scale, from research and commercial networks in IPv4 and IPv6, in order to detect inequalities and access problems. To achieve this objective, measurements were taken from RIPE Atlas probes in research and commercial networks from all regions of the world. Pings were made 12 times a day and traceroutes one time a day during the whole month of January 2024. The results were analysed by continent, then the situation in several countries was studied in detail. The RTT, the number of hops and the AS path were studied for these measurements. The measurements showed inequalities between continents, with Africa and Oceania performing the worst and Europe the best. There are also inequalities between research and commercial networks, neither of which is systematically better than the other, depending on the continent. Performance also varies within the same region depending on the repositories, with those hosted by CDNs performing much better.