Question about Customer Population by ASN for Canada

Mon Oct 2 21:53:59 UTC 2017

> On 3 Oct 2017, at 6:57 am, Jacques Latour <jacques.latour at cira.ca> wrote:
> 
> Hi all!
> 
> I'm working on our IPv6 and DNSSEC adoption report for Canada and the data I use comes largely from APNIC (https://stats.labs.apnic.net/dnssec/CA) and (https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6/CA).
> 
> Labs.APNIC has a pretty cool system to measure this kind of stuff by deploying specially crafted google ads, see "How Big is that Network?"  https://labs.apnic.net/?p=526, and APNIC is able to assess the population behind a network based on ad placement distribution. See https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA for Canada.
> 
> The question I have is why does OVH come #6 with an estimated population of 1,480,927 behind its ASN? Remember these are actual placement of ads.  Should I count those users as part of my stats?
> 
> Rank    ASN     AS Name CC      Users (est.)    % of country    % of Internet   Samples
> 1       AS812   ROGERS-CABLE - Rogers Cable Communications Inc. CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     5,420,034       16.72   0.16    555,718
> 2       AS577   BACOM - Bell Canada     CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     4,474,012       13.8    0.132   458,722
> 3       AS6327  SHAW - Shaw Communications Inc. CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     3,708,414       11.44   0.109   380,225
> 4       AS852   ASN852 - TELUS Communications Inc.      CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     2,914,405       8.99    0.086   298,815
> 5       AS5769  VIDEOTRON - Videotron Telecom Ltee      CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     2,189,946       6.76    0.065   224,536
> 6       AS16276 OVH     CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     1,480,927       4.57    0.044   151,840
> 7       AS15290 ALLST-15290 - Allstream Corp.   CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     1,272,374       3.93    0.038   130,457
> 8       AS855   CANET-ASN-4 - Bell Aliant Regional Communications, Inc. CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     1,211,485       3.74    0.036   124,214
> 9       AS7992  COGECOWAVE - Cogeco Cable       CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     1,112,002       3.43    0.033   114,014
> 10      AS5645  TEKSAVVY - TekSavvy Solutions, Inc.     CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     967,401 2.98    0.029   99,188
> 11      AS11260 EASTLINK-HSI - EastLink CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     695,598 2.15    0.021   71,320
> 12      AS47027 SEASIDE-COMM - Seaside Communications, Inc.     CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     425,561 1.31    0.013   43,633
> 13      AS803   SASKTEL - Saskatchewan Telecommunications       CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     392,186 1.21    0.012   40,211
> 14      AS11814 DISTRIBUTEL-AS11814 - DISTRIBUTEL COMMUNICATIONS LTD.   CA<https://stats.labs.apnic.net/cgi-bin/aspop?c=CA>     370,348 1.14    0.011   37,972

Let me explain our system in a little more detail.

When we serve an ad we note the origin AS of the Ad. Now we assume (probably wrongly but we have no better data) that the ad’s are smeared evenly across the user population of each country. So we assume that the relative weight of ad placement within an AS is proportionate to the relative number of users in that same country. So if AS 131072 receives 50% of the Ads in a country then we assume that AS131072 holds one half of the number of users of the same country. Thats the first piece of data and the first assumption

The second assumption is that your government is not lying! That means that whatever stats your government lodged with the ITU-T relating to the number of Internet users in your country we believe. (and we actually use the world population data to update these numbers to represent the estimated user population today.)

Mashing the two togeether gives the table per country that you are citing here.

So your question is “:Why is Google delivering 4.57% of the ads in Canada into a network ASN that is the ASN registered against OVH”

OVH is an overlay network, but its certainly clear that it is used by a lot of folk and Google appear to find their users to be an attractive target to ad placement. So we get a high placement count of Ads coming from OVH and we geolocate those users to CA. Maybe there is a geolocation issue and IVH should not be CA. Of there really are a lot of eyeballs behind OVH in Canada.

regards,

   Geoff