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Comments on: Antarctica frozen out of internet revolution

Seals and Penguins 

Posted Thursday 26th April 2007 15:10 GMT

They are slacking off down there. Although global warming could be causing problems as well. Secondly anyone know who the ISP is down there? would like to know what the rates are?

re: Anyone know who the ISP is down there? 

Posted Thursday 26th April 2007 16:23 GMT

Uh, that would probably be www.brassmonkeys.co.aq...

IP Density 

Posted Thursday 26th April 2007 16:24 GMT

"Bringing up the rear are the luddites of Antarctica, with a pathetic 15,620 IP addresses, 0.001 per cent of the world total."

Sure thats a minute fraction of the global allocation, but according to "http://www.indexmundi.com/antarctica/population.html", Antarctica has a "peak summer population" of "3,822 total" which means that there are more than 4 IP addresses assigned for every man and woman on the continent! Not all that suprising though when you consider the place is populated solely by techie scientists...

15,620 - that's more than the population 

Posted Thursday 26th April 2007 16:27 GMT

Perhaps indeed the seals and penguins own all those addresses.

Did they forget? 

Posted Thursday 26th April 2007 17:58 GMT

What about Ipv6? Did the researchers forget to check the rate-of-adoption in Asia vs. the US/EU? What picture does that paint?

Ariel Silverstone

I was an Antarctic sysadmin... 

Posted Thursday 26th April 2007 22:18 GMT

Until (very) recently, I was the sysadmin/communications engineer at one of the British bases. Permanent internet connectivity (via satellite) has only been installed in the last few years. The base I worked at had a total bandwidth of 384kbit/s full duplex, shared between up to 120 staff using PCs and an IP phone system. But as the bases are behind a NAT firewall at our HQ in the UK, we wouldn´t have appeared in this survey...

Oh, and I can confirm Sean´s point that as all bases have a large number of datalogging computers and servers, the number of networked machines is often significantly greater than the number of staff.

Ya gotta know how to read the figures 

Posted Friday 27th April 2007 07:18 GMT

Of course the United States would dominate the rest of the world as far as the number of IP addresses. And of course, less empowered areas such as Africa would be dragging up the rear.

What should be noted, however, is that lowly Antarctica, which has but 15,000 or so IP addresses probably has but one quarter that number of actual residents.

If you work out the number of IP addresses per resident, Antarctica should rank up there near the top right after the USA and Europe. And let's not foget that getting the internet down there is a bit more difficult than just having your local cable or phone company hook you up.

Atlanteans 

Posted Friday 27th April 2007 07:20 GMT

Naw. It's those pesky Atlanteans from their hidden base somewhere in the depths of Antartica trying to spam the world with requests like "Flood relief for Atlantis !". Sure as hell sounds better than the 419 spams !!

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