Hi All, I am sure all of you thought the obvious answer is George Washington. The first USA president was called John Hunson, who was known as the president of the confederation. George Washing ton became president 13 years after declaration of independence when the Constitution was ratified by the original states. For those who have been bashing ICT Borad , You should now know some things are not as obvious as you might think, and my own experience in setting up a parastatal from scratch has shown me that it can take more than 3 years just to get the systems going. The main reason for this is so as to have a transparent system, which turns out to be counter productive. If you you indeed want to help ICT board have rapid results, lobby the MP's to change the archaic business processes in the public sector cheers All Charles CHARLES N. NDUATI BUSINESS MANAGER JKUAT ENTERPRISES LTD JOMO KENYATTA UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY JUJA MAIN CAMPUS, THIKA P. O. BOX 79324-00200 NAIROBI, KENYA TEL: 254-067-52420 OR 254-067-52711 FAX: 254-067-52438 MOBILE:254-722728815 EMIAL:charlesnduati2002@yahoo.co.uk www.jkuat.ac.ke ----- Original Message ---- From: Brian Longwe <blongwe@gmail.com> To: charlesnduati2002@yahoo.co.uk Cc: kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke Sent: Thursday, 14 August, 2008 10:52:06 Subject: Re: [kictanet] Day 3 of 10:-IGF Discussions, Internet Interconnection Charges Alex, The term is not "announcing" it is known as "peering" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering which is defined as " is voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the customers of each network. The pure definition of peering is settlement-free or "sender keeps all," meaning that neither party pays the other for the exchanged traffic, instead, each derives revenue from its own customers. " Underlying the ability to peer is the ability to access affordable infrastructure, otherwise most operators settle for transit arrangements where the inherent costs of the underlying transport is too high. Regards, Brian On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 9:47 PM, Gakuru, Alex <alexgakuru.lists@gmail.com> wrote: Alongside we should also consider the IXP concept where ISPs mutually accept one another traffic without international transit (the concept is called "announcing"). Simply put, such traffic never incurs international transit costs. Question: Should this "part" of internet cost consumers the same as costly international satellite? This becomes more apparent when a lot of popular sites get locally hosted, and for example where local content woes and comprises most traffic. Besides that, East (and all of) Africa should embrace solutions that "keep Africa traffic in Africa" such as RASCOM 1 - the satellite now in space that was designed by Kenya's own Engineer James Rege;) potentially saving Africa a sizable chunk of the US$ 800 million annual spending on transit traffic. Also more local and regional IXPs would assist (and less NATs please) Network neutrality is a very hot one I dare not touch much except affirm that whatever obstructs "the end-to-end principle"<http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoend.txt> should be removed from the network. They include privacy invading techniques known as Deep Packet Inspection (or DPI).<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection> Trust me to sneak in consumer issues;) But it is an important aspect when determining through whom your traffic passes. Regards, Alex On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 5:04 PM, mwende njiraini <mwende.njiraini@gmail.com> wrote:

In traditional telephony call termination revenues are shared between operators and are based on negotiated interconnection rates, in a regulated environment, rather than the size and number of subscribers on the network. (I stand to be corrected) Developing countries for a long time have benefited from revenues generated from this international settlement scheme. However, these revenues are rapidly being eroded by VoIP, which is encouraged by 'loosely regulated' flat rate pricing of internet bandwidth. The issue internet interconnection is based on the fact that international ISPs have no incentive to enter shared-cost peering with ISPs developing countries thus forcing them to incur the full cost of transmitting international traffic. What incentives need to be put in place to encourage shared-cost peering? Content development?

There is raging debate on "network neutrality"; with network operators seeking to price network access on the basis of utilization in a bid to manage network congestion. In the US, for example the recent Comcast case has resulted in the regulator, FCC, ruling that Comcast 'discriminatory' network management practices were illegal. To overcome the challenge of network congestion several proposals have been made including the introduction of bandwidth metered services. Vint Cerf, Google's chief internet evangelist, has proposed that ISPs should "introduce transmission caps allowing users to purchase access to the Internet at a given minimum data rate, which would be guaranteed even during times of congestion." Net neutrality is definitely an issue we may need to consider with reference to the current developments in national and international fibre optic projects.

References:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10007079-93.html

Regards

Mwende

Disclaimer: Comments are author's own.

On 8/13/08, John Walubengo <jwalu@yahoo.com> wrote:

...

Plse feel free to belatedly contribute on Day 1 or 2 themes, jst remember to pick the correct subject line. Meanwhile today we should discuss one of IG issues that touch squarely on the retail cost of Internet Service in developing countries- the Internet Interconnection Charges (IIC, in short)

This issue is fairly complex and explosive but we could try and understand if we used a simplified model for Mobile Phone Interconnection Charges and Relationships. Consider mobile phone company, X with 8million customers and mobile phone company, Y with 2 million customers. Each company is supposed to compensate (pay) the other for terminating calls originating from the other. In such a relationship, the bigger company X, can chose to dictate how much the smaller company, Y pays it to terminate the 'Y' calls to its bigger 'X' network/customers.

This is losely similar to what is called Transit relationship on the Internet. The big internet networks (Tier 1 and 2 Internet Backbone Providers) in US/Europe get to dictate how much the smaller networks in developing countries need to pay in order to terminate their internet requests for email, web, dns, voip and other services into their Network. Even our much celebrated TEAMS, EASsy and other projects cannot escape these Transit Interconnection Costs. Ofcourse if you do not like their Interconnection Charges you are free to take a walk into nowhere (read: stay offline).

Another relationship does exist, the Peer-to-Peer relationship which is equivalent to Mobile phone company Y and company X both having equal or similar number of customers/value e.g. 5million each. In such a relationship, the two Internet Backbone/Service providers chose NOT to charge each other anything. Traffic between the two is exchanged reciprically for free but below each of this big Networks are the smaller networks (read African networks), that must pay Transit Charges. Put bluntly, Africa and other developing countries are subsidizing Internet Costs for the rich nations in the North.

Many studies have been carried out to get us out of this fix such as the Halfway-propositions, the ICAIS, etc but todate the status quo remains. The standard response has remained 'If it current interconnection models are working, why should you try and fix them?'

1 day for comments, corrections and/or proposals on this theme.

walu.

Ref: for some of the Studies: International Charging Arrangements for Internet Services, Module I, ICAIS, p.3 http://www.tmdenton.com/pub/reports/icais_mod1_ch1.pdf

The Half-Way Proposition. http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/back/balancing-act_130.html

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