Just as a further note to my last email – something else people need to be aware of.

Just because peering happens at an exchange – unless the *data* is local to the exchange – the ISP peering still has to bear the cost of delivering that content from the rest of their network to the peering point.  Meaning – in the case of a large international ISP – if they peer locally but the majority of their content sits in Europe or the US or somewhere else – and there is no equitable traffic exchange with other parties (so the ingress/egress traffic volumes are way out of sync) peering can also be a very costly affair in that regard.

It’s a complex issue 😊

Andrew

From: kictanet [mailto:kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Job Muriuki via kictanet
Sent: 03 May 2018 12:19
To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>
Cc: Job Muriuki <muriukin@gmail.com>
Subject: [kictanet] Local IXP (KIXP) peering and Local traffic

Anyone here from Tespok or CA shed some light.

I have a question on what governs local ISP peering in Kenya. There is KIXP at EADC which was set up so to keep local traffic local. Is it open to international carriers like Seacom, Tata, Etisalat, Hurricane electric, China Telkom and others who are present at EADC?

The reason I ask is if you take service, IP transit service from any of the carriers and you are not peering at KIXP your IPs (Local traffic) go all the way to either France or UAE and back to Kenya while they could have just peered at KIXP and offer faster and "affordable" connections. It makes no sense for a connection to ecitizen or a server hosted locally at say Node Africa to have to go to IXPs in other countries and brought back to Kenya getting treated and charged as international traffic.

Is KIXP that unreliable or what is the challenge? If we don't grow our local capacity to deliver gigabit speeds in our IXP and take advantage of CDNs available locally, will we ever fully utilise the internet and create jobs at the same time without having multinationals come do it?

Currently getting a data pipe from point A to B over a fiber connection within Kenya is more expensive than getting an internet connection from the same provider which will be carried on the same fiber link as the data pipe which makes absorption of hosting services in Kenya way expensive compared to hosting servers in Europe or America. Most Kenyans and even some government agencies result in hosting services overseas and the users are in Kenya then what is the point of investing in fiber locally and have it rot underground while cash is sent to companies out there for a service we can provide locally?

Regards,
Job Muriuki,

Skype: heviejob

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