IGF Report For Workshop 56:
The role of Internet Exchange Points in creating Internet capacity and bringing autonomy to developing nations.
Introduction
The workshop aimed on building upon the highly successful IXP Best practices Session at the 2007 IGF In Rio. Several themes were discussed that highlighted the role of Internet exchange points in making developing regions economically autonomous; how Internet exchange points foster the development of local content and culture; and how IXPs facilitate other critical infrastructure like the Domain Name System.
Panelists:
Sam Paltridge leads the OECD's project of the economic impact of ICTs generally, and Internet exchange points more specifically, on developing countries. One of the outcomes of this year's OECD Ministerial was a conclusion that Internet exchange points were critical to the expansion of the global Internet economy, and should be established in any country where they don't yet exist. Sam was one of last year's panelists, and adds economic and intergovernmental policy experience to this conversation.
Salam Yamout is a Program Manager in Cisco's Social Responsibility group. As part of her role in the Partnership for Lebanon initiative, Salam brought together Lebanon's Internet service providers, IT industry, and government to create Lebanon's first Internet exchange point, which is also the second IXP in the Arab League countries, after Cairo. Salam's work in the Partnership for Lebanon aims to modernize the country's communications infrastructure, in order to achieve economic growth and position the country to compete regionally and globally.
Michuki Mwangi is the Senior Education Manager at ISOC. He previously served as the Administrative Manager at the .KE registry (KENIC) and serves as president of the African Top Level Domain (AfTLD) Association and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the Kenya Internet Exchange Point (KIXP), both in a volunteer capacity. He facilitated the anycast deployment of the .COM, .NET, F, and J root servers in Kenya, as well as other key infrastructure deployments in Africa. Michuki was one of last year's panelists, and has a background in national communications regulation as well as IXPs.
Bill Woodcock is research director of Packet Clearing House, the international non-governmental organization that provides support for critical Internet infrastructure, including Internet exchange points and the core of the domain name system. In addition to his not-for-profit research and policy work, Bill has operated international commercial Internet service provision and content delivery networks since 1989 and, in addition to PCH, serves on the boards of the non-profit American Registry for Internet Numbers and Internet Capacity Development Consortium.
Sebastian Bellagamba: Is the ISOC regional Bureau Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean region. Prior to joining ISOC, Sebastian worked in the Internet Service Providers industry, founding and running several ISPs in Argentina and also managing regional Latin America operations. At that time, he was also President of the Argentine Internet Service Providers Association (CABASE). Sebastian also has an extensive career on international Internet-related organizations, having been a member of LACNIC’s Auditing Committee, Chairman of the Argentine Chapter of the Internet Society, Chairman of the Argentine Chapter of the IPv6 Task Force; he is currently a member of ICANN’s Address Supporting Organization Council, being the Chairman of this Council for the last two years.
The Presentations and Discussions
Salam Yamout presented on the establishment of the Beirut IX as one of the projects initiated by Cisco on behalf of the Partnership for Lebanon (www.partnreshipforlebanon.org). The Partnership for Lebanon was formed at the end of July 2006 war to assist the Lebanon community to rebuild ITC infrastructure, regain long-term stability and economic growth. The Partnership for Lebanon promotes the establishment of Public Private Partnerships. In the case of the Beirut IXP project, the Partnership worked with the following partners: Packet Clearing House (donation of expertise and know how), Cisco (donation of equipment and facilitation), the Professional Computer Association (providing an umbrella for dialogue and trust), and Berytech (subsidizing the location and set up costs).
It took exactly seven months to establish the Beirut IX:
· In May 07, meetings with main stakeholders and government officials were conducted to assess feasibility and compliance with governing laws
· In December 07, the stakeholders settled on the location and governance model of the Beirut IX. It is worth noting here that many meetings between the various ISPs took place in the period from May to December, before trust was built in the project and in the potential of the IXP.
· In January 2008, the Beirut IX was set up and installed, and PCH performed a BGP workshop. That same afternoon, the first 3 ISPs started peering together.
· By April 08, all ISPs were peering
The challenges that were faced during the establishment of the Beirut IX were:
· The rocky relationship with the incumbent operator, as the latter decided to peer and then withdrew causing lack of confidence and uncertainty from the part of the parties interested in peering.
· The location of the Beirut IX was the hardest decision to make.
· It’s worth noting the different approaches CIO’s vs. CEO’s had towards the establishment of the IXP. The CIO’s had an easier time building trust & confidence and were comfortable with the informal structure of the IXP. The CEOs were more cautious requiring more time to build trust in between them.
· It was difficult to get the Lebanese to document the establishment and operations of the Beirut IX. But fortunately, the Management and Operations Committee published all relevant information on www.beirutix.net
Bill Woodcock presented on the Packet Clearing House statistics report on growth and IXPs for the period 2008. In this report indicated that the KIXP had the highest percentage growth in the 2008 period with a high of 384%. In comparison to the European IXP had a higher Net traffic growth with AMSIX recording over 200Gbps during the period. In the regional net growth, Asia-Pacific and Africa had the highest percentage growth with Europe and Asia-Pacific recording the highest net traffic growth. More information on the growth statistics is available on the PCH website https://prefix.pch.net/applications/ixpdir/summary/growth-region/
Mr. Michuki Mwangi presented on the impact of IXPs from an African Perspective. The presentation highlighted that there were 17 IXPs in 15 African countries. During his presentation, participants from Malawi confirmed that the Malawi Internet Exchange Point has been commissioned the previous week thus increasing the number to 18 IXPs in 16 African Countries. Following a research conducted earlier in 2008 the total traffic distribution across 10 African IXPs totaled to 364.5Mbps with South Africa having about 55% of the total.
Mr. Mwangi further explained the evolution of the Internet Interconnection model. The establishment of IXPs at national have introducing the peering concept which lowers cost of Internet traffic deliver compared to the transit Interconnection models that exists between Service providers. As the impact of the peering model is realized, the capacity of links connected at the peering points or IXPs will grow in size in comparison to the transit links. In the end, transit links capacity will only be a fraction of the peering links capacity allowing for lower costs of access for all.
Further, using the case study of the Kenyan Internet Exchange point (KIXP), he highlighted some of the factors that attribute to the growth of IXPs taking note that the right policies were pivotal in their success. In his view, the KIXP has managed to attract 26 participants and grew 384% in 2008 following its review of its peering, pricing policy’s, introduction of additional value added services and improving the facilities stability, security and resilience for power and cooling. This features have seemingly attracted the participation of Google at the KIXP and hence the remarkable growth of traffic at the facility.
Sebastian Bellagamba presented on behalf of the Argentina IXP: NAP Cabase. As a co-founder of one of the oldest IXPs coming from emerging countries, he focused his presentation in sharing lessons learnt while deploying an IXP in a developing country, highlighting obstacles and impediments they found and wrong decisions they have made in that process.
The major point Sebastian addressed was the relationship between the peering model (being it mandatory multilateral versus bilateral agreements) and the incentives the incumbent/s have to participate in the IXP. He pointed that, in the Argentinean case, having a multilateral mandatory peering model caused tension with the incumbents that were participating in the IXP, to the point that they eventually left; and how NAP Cabase managed to produce changes in its policies in order to keep the IXP growing.
Conclusion
The chair closed by thanking the panel and the participants for making the workshop informative and contributing to a lively discussion. He particularly thanked Packet Clearing House (PCH), the Internet Society (ISOC), and the World Information Technology Services Alliance (WITSA) for assisting to jointly organize the workshop. He noted that the discussion had ranged over best practices for IXPs and that participants had made good use of the depth of hands-on experience on the panel stemming from different regions around the world. From his perspective an ongoing challenge is to explain the benefits of IXPs to the policy making community and having technical community experts willing to attend the IGF, in this context, was greatly appreciated. He noted that the session continued the dialogue from the previous workshop on establishing and managing IXPs that took place in Rio de Janeiro, and he hoped this would be continued at the next IGF.