1 Quantifying the Digital Divide Les Cottrell – SLAC Prepared for the ICFA-SCIC video meeting, May Partially funded by DOE/MICS Field Work Proposal on Internet End-to-end Performance Monitoring (IEPM), by the SciDAC base program.

2 Coverage Added about 10 new countries for eJDS/ICTP, including W. Africa, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nigeria, Ghana Hosts in over 70 countries monitored Need contacts for: Peru, Ecuador, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Mauritania, Senegal, Cameroon, Syria, Oman, Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, Phillipines

3 Current State Worst regions (by loss): Central Asia, Africa, South Asia, and Middle East (except Israel) For more details see: pdf

4 Trends by region Latin America and S. E. Europe catching up China, Russia & Indian sub-continent keeping up but many years behind Africa falling further behind Performance from California to developing regions is hundreds of times worse than to developed regions 80% improvement Factor 10 in 4 yrs

5 Second Open Round Table on Developing Countries Access to Scientific Knowledge: Quantifying the Digital Divide October 2003, Trieste, Italy By invitation Open round table among scientists, librarians, decision-makers, journalists, electronic publishers, contents providers, information and communication technology experts, donors and non-profit organizations working on the dissemination of science and the transfer of knowledge and technology towards developing countries. Goal bring together all interested parties to analyse, share experiences, promote ideas and discuss –better understanding and quantifying the digital divide (for example, differences in network performance for developed and developing countries) –concrete strategic alternatives –innovative technological tools –e-contents licensing issues to support scientists working in remote areas and having low-bandwidth, or expensive access to on-line database services and the Internet. International Advisory Committee –Minella Alarcon (UNESCO)UNESCO –Les Cottrell (SLAC)SLAC –Harvey B Newman (Caltech)Caltech –Carol Priestley (INASPINASP Web page: