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1.
Internet Society
Role of Content Localisation and Traffic Exchange
10 December 2014, Bishkek
Maarit Palovirta, European Regional Affairs Manager
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Local Content and Internet Development
Source: OECD/ISOC/UNESCO (2013): The Relationship between Local Content, Internet Development and Access Prices
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What Does Local Content Development
Entail?
1. Users
• Consumers of content
• Creators and disseminators of content
1. Infrastructure
• Cost, access and latency
• Local content hosting companies
• Domestic Internet Exchange Point
1. Law
• Telecommunications regulations
• Intellectual property rights
• Media literacy programmes
Best Practice
Forums
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Geography of Top Level Domain Names
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Internet Access Value Chain
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Role of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs)
A primary role of an IXP is to:
•Keep local Internet traffic within local infrastructure and to reduce costs
associated with traffic exchange between networks.
•Improve the quality of Internet services and drive demand by reducing
delay and improving end-user experience.
•Create a convenient hub for attracting key Internet infrastructures within
countries e.g. data hosting facilities.
•Act as a catalyst for overall Internet development including commercial,
governmental and academic stakeholders.
Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are now well recognised
as a vital part of the Internet ecosystem and
essential for facilitating a robust domestic ICT sector*.
* See for example, the OECD’s recent report on Internet Traffic Exchange:
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/internet-trafficexchange_5k918gpt130q-en
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IXPs around the World
Source: TeleGeography World IX Map, http://www.internetexchangemap.com/
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Promoting Content Localisation
How can governments and other local stakeholders boost
content localisation?
• National broadband strategy and accompanying regulatory framework;
• e-Government programmes can serve as “good practice” for local content
and service creation;
• Domestic data hosting facilities and IXP to lower prices and reduce
latency;
• Government promoted media literacy programmes.
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Useful Materials
•The Relationship between Local Content, Internet Development and
Access Prices (OECD/ISOC/UNESCO, 2013): http://www.oecd-
ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/the-relationship-between-local-
content-internet-development-and-access-prices_5k4c1rq2bqvk-en
• IFG 2014 Best Practice Forum Final Outcome Paper on Local Content:
http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/best-practice-forums
• ISOC IXP Toolkit: http://www.ixptoolkit.org
• Geography of Top Level Domain Names (Oxford Internet Institute):
http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/?page=geography-of-top-level-domain-
names
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10.
0
Get Involved
There are so many ways to
support the Internet.
Explore how you can make
an impact.
Become a Member
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Attend an Event This is your Internet.
Join it!
www.internetsociety.org
For any questions, please contact me at: palovirta@isoc.org
Founded in 1992, by Internet pioneers
The Internet Society is the world's trusted independent source of leadership for Internet policy, technology standards, and future development. More than simply advancing technology, we work to ensure the Internet continues to grow and evolve as a platform for innovation, economic development, and social progress for people around the world. With offices in Washington, D.C, USA, and Geneva, Switzerland, we work to ensure that the Internet and the web that is built on it:
Continues to develop as an open platform that empowers people to share ideas and connect in new and innovative ways
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The Internet Society supports the evolution of the Internet through technical expertise, capacity building and innovation.
Definition:
Local content = ccTLDs per capita, Wikipedia articles per language per capita, blogs per capita. Content in local language(s) or relevant to local culture and geography.
Internet development: penetration rates, AS per capita, international bandwidth per capita, IPv4 per capita.
Graph:
Two-way relationship between local content and the degree of Internet network development:
-> Local content development can drive investments in Internet infrastructure by increasing demand for networks and bandwidth to access the content.
-> Conversely, better infrastructure provides an additional incentive for local content creators to supply more local content.
-> Concerning the network development, it is important to note that while being mutually dependent on local content, this phenomenon is also subject to market forces.
Interdependency between Internet prices and infrastructure:
-> Given these two interdependencies, one can conclude there is also interdependency between local content and the Internet price…. Good for end-users!
Both local content and Internet infrastructure feed into the broader macro-economic ecosystem.
Link to e-participation:
- Local content can increase e-participation directly as well as indirectly though improved Internet infrastructure and lower Internet access prices.
Enablement of local content should focus on reducing barriers to content production and use across all these three components (users, infrastructure, law).
Users are the beginning and end of local content exchange.
E-participation is directly linked to creation, dissemination and consumption of content.
At Istanbul IGF 2014 in September, local content was the topic of one of the best practice forums. You can find out more about these three components in the final outcomes papers, link in the end.
Driving demand for Internet use and e-participation can be done by developing of local content as discussed, but also by facilitating access to regional and international content.
This graphic maps a combination of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) in order to provide an indication of the total number of domain registrations in every country worldwide.
The graphic excludes all countries that contain fewer than 10,000 domains.
Findings:
A majority of domains (78%) are registered in Europe or North America, reinforcing the dominance of those two regions in terms of Internet content production.
Asia, in contrast, is home to 13% of the world’s domains while Latin America (4%), Oceania (3%), and the Middle East and Africa combined (2%) have even smaller shares of the world’s websites.
These data offer a fascinating window into one important facet of Internet content production. Large Internet populations in some countries (e.g. China) are not necessarily indicators of large numbers of domain registrations. In other words, just because a country is home to a large number of Internet users, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is also home to an active group of content producers. However, it is also likely that we see a lot of the world’s content simply placed within websites that are hosted within only a few countries (in particular, the US).
Importance of IXP:
In a local context, presence of an IXP greatly enhances local capacity and often serves as a “capacity incubator”.
International content also feeds demand for local bandwidth and contributes to the local Internet economy.
International content providers and networks serve as aggregators of content; they deliver traffic directly to the terminating network and provide quality-enhancing inputs, such as caching of content close to the end user.
Local caching also reduces the volume of traffic that needs to be delivered to the terminating network. CDNs growing not only because of cost but also because of quality.
Conclusion: A healthy Internet commercial ecosystem ensures that both locally-produced content and content served by foreign organisations can be easily hosted in close proximity to every IXP.
Now then, what does ISOC do in the trans-Eurasian context? And what would we like to do?
ISOC’s goal to defend to global health of the Internet and current focus areas include: routing security, spam, IPv6 and finally IXPs, which I will discuss in more detail today.
Barriers to Internet development in trans-Eurasian context include infrastructure issues but also demand side issues:
International connectivity and national backbone: Infrastructure issues are expected to be solved through government and telecommunications company dialogue and cooperation.
Last-mile and Internet services: Local demand issues are mainly a concern for local governments and local businesses, demand needs to exist to create a sustainable business model for last mile connectivity and Internet services.
Traffic exchange/ inter-connection points: IXPs contribute both to infrastructure development and to creating an enabling local environment through content and a reinforced Internet eco-system.
- ISOC IXP track-record: AXIS programme aims to have 80% of Internet traffic exchanged in Africa by 2020, keeping local traffic local. IXP development and training in 16 countries? (tbc)
Definition of IXP:
An Internet Exchange Point (IXP) is simply a physical location where different IP networks meet to exchange traffic with each other with copper or fibre cables interconnecting their equipment, usually via one or more Ethernet switches. They keep local traffic local.
Role of IXP:
Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are now well recognised as a vital part of the Internet ecosystem and essential for facilitating a robust domestic ICT sector*.
I believe most of us understand the baseline benefits of an IXP, but here I would like to emphasise the possibility to build and layer additional value add services on IXPs or in their immediate surroundings.
One such service is data hosting, which is important to optimise access to local content as well as to regional/ international content.
So IXP is a key enabler to deliver content with lower prices and latency to end-users.
So far IXPs have only emerged in about half the countries in the world, and these vary greatly in scale and effectiveness.
ISOC track record:
Internet Society is working with numerous countries and regions to help them establish and reap the benefits of IXPs: “Barriers to the Internet” analysis for Africa, in the making for South Asia and the Caribbean; capacity building and training (both technical and business).
IXP toolkit for starting up IXPs.
ISOC enabled examples on IXP launches in Africa this year include Rwanda, Namibia, Swaziland, Gambia. Recent workshop e.g. work in progress include Georgia and Montenegro in Europe and Papua New Guinea in Asia-Pacific.
Higher e-participation will most likely be result of series of actions by local stakeholders including government, business and civil society.
Role of government
By creating a broad ICT- supported platform and framework for collaboration across government and with many other actors like companies, SMEs, civil society organisations, communities, groups and individuals, as well as with hackers, designers and artists, the potential for innovation increases.
In doing this, the public sector’s role changes to one of coordinator, integrator, enabler, facilitator, arbiter, broker and regulator for the activities of others in delivering public value.
However, government might not become an actor like any other as it still needs to fulfil roles which others cannot, including taking responsibility for overall regulation, quality, accountability for services and performance, responsibility if things go wrong, and for data protection and security.
Citizen engagement
Citizen engagement at a basic level includes information, consultation and feedback by service users.
Citizen engagement can help build and strengthen the trust relationship between governments and citizens.
Consultation and informed participation can help lead to policies that better address constituents’ needs and also increase support for, and trust in, public institutions and their policies.
