Rural school internet connectivity monitoring results (April 2025)

After the completion of software and conducting some advocacy campaigns with the stakeholders, we have travelled to pilot schools, tested existing quality of internet speed before and after upgrade with the new hardware.

The measurements were conducted in 10 pilot schools. The team used such measurement tools as fast.com, nPerf. The results demonstrated the average and peak speed and bandwidth capacity (download, upload, latency). In addition to this tests, the team had remotely installed GIGA Meters for constant monitoring of the interent quality. All installations had been made in accordance with the guidance of the GIGA Project.

Apparently, all pilot schools had fiber optics cables up to schools that potentially could allow speed up to 1Gbps. The fiber optics were laid by the Kyrgyztelecom ISP with the financial support of the Digital CASA Project, project funded by the World Bank and implemented by the Project Implementation Unit under the Ministry of the Digital Development. However, the media converters and routers were outdated creating hardware constrains to benefiting from high speed Internet. The upgrade of routers to Wi-fi 6 standard ones allowed to increase connectivity speeds up to 30% in connection points. The upgrade of wifi hotspots allowed to have more simultaneous connections at the same time with no setback on quality of services.

The technical audit of the school network infrastructure revealed that there was no much progress from the authorities and school administrations over the last six months. However, some schools had installed videosurveillance system with the support of high quality video streaming and possibility to transmit data to the administraiton of the Ministry of Education and Sciences. Nevertheless, the outbound bandwidth capacity remained low.

We also conducted measurements of the LAN infrastructure: existing topology, the needs and challenges of school principals, teachers and schoolchildren. As an outcome we have made preliminary assessment of required maintenance works to connect all STEM classes to the LAN Internet.

Why LAN not WiFi? Some schools had thick brick or sand block walls that effectively block wifi signals from routers installed in corridors or other rooms. In this context, the LAN infrastructure was the only possible option.