On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 3:37 AM, Walubengo J <jwalu@yahoo.com> wrote:

Mich,

I like ;-)

thank you ;-)

But as Francis says, plse put it in perspective by comparing with the previous years (or give us the url for the graphs we do the comparisons ourselves).

Also, throw in the ratio between Local vs International traffic over the years since 1G local traffic is good but compared to 20G International traffic (CCK May2011 report?) may imply we might still have some time to go.

Well then your ratio is 20:1, no?

ANS: True. but not good ratio according to me - see further below.

KIXP probably doesn't collect data on international traffic, as that doesn't go over their switch.

ANS:True again. But my point was IXP traffic makes sense only when contrasted to international traffic. So even though KIXP does not physically collect this data, whoever reports this traffic needs to go the extra mile and find the International Bandwidth, quote it, contrast it and then make conclusions sorry, I agree, i maybe am being too academic :-(

In layman terms this means that we are Net IMPORTERS of content and EXPORT very little content.

As are most countries.

ANS: True again. But the 'real' beneficiaries of the Information age have their content local - both in terms of creation and hosting. Think FB, Twitter, Youtube, Gmail, most Research Content Networks, etc all created in the US such that the average Internet User in the US has ZERO incentive to cross International links. I highly doubt that they are Net Importers of content. Neither is China, Japan, Korea who run their homegrown FB, Youtube, Google, etc equivalents. Indeed Google recently tried to pull out of China but no one really missed them (Sorry Mucheru) and they had to quickly get back in. That is called playing at the top of the "Content" food-chain. So in short, true most countries are Net Importers of Content, but they are the ones playing at the bottom of the content food-chain - consuming Euro-US-centric content.

Put differently very few chaps out there are interested in our content down here (coz it doesnt exist - even our very own trace route to nation.co.ke hosts abroad...)

...a good target would be to work towards 50:50 ratio of local to international traffic or 20G local and 20G international...all the said and done.

Did you just pull these numbers out of your hat? Why would we want to keep int'l traffic at current levels?

ANS: Was Not wearing my hat then :-) But 20G:20G was quite deliberate and intentional ratio. I visualized of a day when the ratio of local to international bandwidth consumption in Kenya will be at 1:1 i.e. if our International links are importing 20G of (international) traffic, our IXP (local links) should be hitting about the same bandwidth- meaning most stuff kenyans will be looking for online would be homegrown and locally hosted. Ofcourse it wont happen tomorrow - but if it did, that would be nice.

ends
-walu.

--
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how we get there." Jon Postel