OPN04-6: Concentric Two-Ring Network for the African Continent: A Proposal

In the challenging social/geographical environment in Africa, how to design a robust network while tolerating the traffic imbalance is the major goal in the paper. To achieve the goal, we propose and analyze the design of a symmetrical concentric two-ring network to connect all countries in Africa. We develop optimization schemes while dealing with some special issues in Africa, such as a large desert in North Africa, high-speed network connectivity to the rest of the world through a few undersea fiber cables, and traffic imbalance caused by the differential populations of the various countries. Our simulation experiments demonstrate that the concentric two-ring network design is a natural candidate for the African continent.