First published: 29th August 2018
The latest annual report by Qrator Labs on national internet reliability shows that Singapore has exchanged places with Hong Kong. The report also shows that IPv6 networks appear to be significantly less stable than traditional IPv4 networks due to ongoing peering wars between several Tier-1 providers in IPv6.
Qrator Labs tried to answer the question, “What percentage of AS in this region would lose their connectivity with Tier-1 operators, thereby losing global availability?” using data on how ISPs interconnect and route traffic (AS and BGP) and the IPIP geodatabase to match IP addresses to countries.
In the results, Germany was top for IPv4 reliability, followed by Britain, Singapore was 5th, up 18 places from the 2017 survey, and Hong Kong was 15th, down 13 places. Qrator Labs attributed Singapore's rise to a decentralisation in the Singapore ISP market related to business difficulties in SingTel, and difficulties with SingTel integrating with Philippines’ ISP Globe. Conversely, PCCW gained market share and active customers in Hong Kong.
The data also showed Hong Kong's importance to global internet connectivity: the Hong Kong Internet Exchange (HKIX) is the biggest Asian internet exchange and hundreds of ISPs are members of it, exchanging traffic, without having a presence in the Hong Kong internet segment itself.