[kictanet] IG Discussion 2009, Day 5 of 10- Criticical Internet Resources, IXPs and NOFB

[John Walubengo]

Mornings,  must apologize for the slow start but am sure we all deserve it as we the holiday gets underway.  Feel free to use the break to post your contributions on previous themes as I can see happening.

Todays theme is quite brief and we start by breaking down the jargon.

IXP: stands for Internet eXchange Point, similar to a telephone exchange point, where calls within a particular town, district, province or country are aggregrated and routed.  An IXP is similar in that it aggregates internet traffic within a town, district, province or country. Typically, if a country lacks an IXP, then calls/internet traffic destined for your neighbor accross the street ends up being routed accross expensive international links and then back into the country for delivery (not good). 

Issues: In kenya we are lucky to have an National IXP, but the issue is whether it is being used optimally.  How many service providers are connecting their local traffic through the IXP?  Secondly, of what use is the national IXP if most users are interested in and target foreign content (yahoo.com, gmail.com, facebook.com, etc rather than xyz.co.KE)?

NOFB: Stands for National Optical Fiber Backbone. The .KE Government under the implementing arm of Kenya ICT Board has been building the domestic fiber cable accross all districts in Kenya.  This should improve and extend access uniformally accross the country. Eventually, e-Government services would be accessed over these networks.

Issues:  Private Telco Operators have always felt that the Govt has no business pulling cables across the country/cities. They feel it is undue competition brought in to distort the telco markets - shouldn't it be more efficient for Govt to lease fiber links from existing telco operators?. What's more, who will run and manage this domestic network? How would this infrastructure co-exist or is it intended to eventually replace the IXP that is currently run by Private Sector?

1 day on this - hope some of you do manage to get online.

regards.
walu.