Internet connectivity from Dakar to the world

I'm spending a week in Dakar, Senegal and the connectivity in my hotel room was pretty snappy. Seeing a Ubiquiti UniFi U6 access point inside my room was also a bit of a surprise, having braved some pretty terrible connections regularly even in Silicon Valley hotels.

Of course, I only got curious so I pulled up Terminal on my Mac and started firing off traceroute commands to see how data actually travels from a city like Dakar to the rest of the world.

1. Blazing fast edge networks (~7 ms)

I started by looking up local Senegalese infrastructure and globally distributed Anycast edge networks like Cloudflare. The numbers were immediate proof that Dakar's local digital infrastructure is rock solid.

1. 3.5 msHotel Wi-Fi, DakarDouble router inside the hotel
2. 6 msSonatel core, DakarSenegal's primary carrier
3. 6.5 msCloudflare 1.1.1.1, DakarEdge node in the same city — DNS and cached pages never leave Dakar

traceroute to 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  192.168.20.1 (192.168.20.1)  3.589 ms  5.003 ms  3.371 ms
 2  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  3.389 ms  4.433 ms  3.595 ms
 3  41.82.36.1 (41.82.36.1)  5.760 ms  6.527 ms  5.450 ms
 4  196.207.232.80 (196.207.232.80)  6.628 ms  6.007 ms  6.365 ms
 5  196.207.250.181 (196.207.250.181)  6.054 ms  6.256 ms  6.153 ms
 6  196.207.219.252 (196.207.219.252)  6.515 ms  7.713 ms  6.305 ms
 7  196.207.249.219 (196.207.249.219)  20.952 ms * *
 8  one.one.one.one (1.1.1.1)  12.300 ms  6.567 ms  6.528 ms

Local sites like orange.sn and government portals (primature.sn) returned identical ~7 ms results.

2. The Atlantic Ocean cable: Dakar to Europe in 42 ms

Next, I wanted to see what happens when traffic leaves the African continent. Testing google.com revealed how Senegal's coastal geography pays massive dividends.

1. 3.5 msHotel Wi-Fi, Dakar
2. 7 msSonatel core, DakarLast hop on land
3. 42 msSeixal, Portugal+35 ms — across the Atlantic via subsea cable
4. 43 msGoogle, LisbonInside Google's network

traceroute to google.com (142.250.74.78), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  192.168.20.1 (192.168.20.1)  3.488 ms  3.265 ms  3.560 ms
 2  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  3.624 ms  3.328 ms  6.651 ms
 3  41.82.36.1 (41.82.36.1)  6.608 ms  7.314 ms  6.170 ms
 4  196.207.232.80 (196.207.232.80)  6.451 ms  6.213 ms  6.730 ms
 5  196.207.219.92 (196.207.219.92)  6.058 ms
 6  ix-ae-10-0.tcore1.sz5-seixal.as6453.net (195.219.129.84)  42.895 ms  43.428 ms  41.778 ms
 7  if-bundle-2-2.qcore1.sz5-seixal.as6453.net (195.219.65.7)  42.536 ms  42.775 ms  42.464 ms
 8  if-bundle-5-2.qcore1.pv9-lisbon.as6453.net (195.219.214.37)  43.612 ms  41.578 ms  43.403 ms

That 35 millisecond jump between the last hop on land and Seixal is literally light traveling thousands of kilometers through subsea fiber optics along the Atlantic ocean floor (via major subsea lines like the ACE cable). Reaching Southern Europe in 42 ms is faster than many connections between South America and North America.

3. The 10,000 km detour to West Africa

Then came the surprise. I tried tracing a target to Senegal's immediate neighbor, The Gambia. You can drive from Dakar to Banjul in a few hours (~300 km), so I expected a sub-15 ms trace.

Instead, I got this:

1. 4 msHotel Wi-Fi, Dakar
2. 42 msSeixal, PortugalOut to sea
3. 70 msLondon, UKOverland to Telehouse
4. 134 msWest Africa carrierBack down an ocean cable
5. 192 msBanjul, The Gambia~300 km from where it started

traceroute to gambia.gov.gm (102.140.149.3), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  192.168.20.1 (192.168.20.1)  4.018 ms
 ...
 6  ix-ae-10-0.tcore1.sz5-seixal.as6453.net (195.219.129.84)  42.145 ms
 11 if-bundle-54-2.qhar4.ldn-london.as6453.net (195.219.83.213)  70.882 ms
 13 ae0-4.rt.thn.lon.uk.retn.net (87.245.233.104)  68.941 ms
 16 41.242.113.208 (41.242.113.208)  133.618 ms
 20 212.60.80.241 (212.60.80.241)  192.002 ms

To talk to a country right next door, my data had to travel 10,000 kilometers through two European countries because the ISPs lack direct cross-border peering. I saw the exact hairpinning when tracing mtn.ng in Nigeria (~188 ms).

4. Going intercontinental

Finally, I traced india.gov.in to see how a packet travels halfway around the planet from West Africa.

1. 4 msHotel Wi-Fi, Dakar
2. 43 msSeixal, Portugal
3. 55 msMadrid, Spain
4. 68 msMarseille, FranceMediterranean gateway
5. ~250 msMumbai, IndiaRed Sea and Arabian Sea cables

 1  192.168.20.1 (192.168.20.1)  3.797 ms
 6  ix-ae-10-0.tcore1.sz5-seixal.as6453.net (195.219.129.84)  42.609 ms  [Portugal]
 10 if-bundle-6-2.qcore2.emad3-madrid.as6453.net (195.219.214.48)  55.279 ms  [Spain]
 14 mei-b5-link.ip.twelve99.net (62.115.136.214)  68.061 ms  [Marseille, France]
 15 reliance-ic-361536.ip.twelve99-cust.net (62.115.155.139)  280.311 ms  [Subsea Jump to Mumbai]
 19 136.232.148.178 (136.232.148.178)  186.848 ms  [National Informatics Centre, India]

This trace mapped a 12,000 km journey: Dakar → Lisbon → Madrid → Marseille → Red Sea Cable → Mumbai. The massive jump from 68 ms in Marseille to 280 ms in India shows the raw physical latency of crossing the Mediterranean, Egypt, and the Arabian Sea.

Everything I tested

Senegal sits in a uniquely advantageous position. As a Tier 2 coastal gateway, Dakar acts as a critical subsea jumping-off point. If you are browsing European servers, using Google, or hitting Cloudflare-backed sites, the performance in Dakar is stellar.

What isn't so great is connectivity between neighboring West African nations — a packet heading to The Gambia or Nigeria first heads to London before coming back into the African continent.