1. Internet Society
Role of Internet Exchange Points (IXP)
2nd
Central Asia Internet Symposium – 2 March 2016, Dushanbe
Maarit Palovirta (palovirta@isoc.org)
2. 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 favorable environment for local Internet infrastructure and service
development e.g. local content and shared services.
•Act as a catalyst for overall Internet development through knowledge sharing
and capacity building.
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
3. IXPs around the World
Source: TeleGeography World IX Map, http://www.internetexchangemap.com/
4. IXP and Local Internet Eco-system
ISP 4
ISP 1 ISP 2
IXP evolution
No IXP IXP ‘spoke’ IXP ‘hub’
IXP
ISP 3
IXP
Content
provider
International
ISP 4
ISP 1 ISP 2
Country A
ISP 3
IXP
Content
provider
International
ISP 4
ISP 2
ISP 1
IXP
ISP 3
IXP
International
Content
provider
Country A Country A
7. Language is a significant issue, and English
remains over-represented
8. ISOC: IXP & Interconnection Activities
•ISOC works with partners throughout the world to build IXPs,
human capacity, and bottom-up governance of IXPs.
•With partners:
Euro-IX, RIRs (RIPE-NCC, AfriNIC, APNIC, LACNIC), IXPs, Cisco,
Comcast, Google, Alcatel, Microsoft, NSRC, PCH, and other global
and regional experts
•Through Grants:
IXP Toolkit Grant from Google
Alcatel and Cisco donations & equipment grants
Comcast and Microsoft grants for IXP development and training
9. ISOC: 2014-15 Highlights
• Create an IXP Portal:
Access to information & experts |
www.ixptoolkit.org
Released 25 February 2014 | Rebooting
2ndQ2015
IXP Videos
• Create an IXP Toolkit:
A study and Methodology to Identify Best
Practices |
www.internetsociety.org/ixptoolkitguide/
Released 25 February 2014 | Rebooting
2ndQ2015
2014 by Numbers:
-10 new IXPs with
ISOC involvement
-18 IXPs “leveled up”
with ISOC involvement
-34 IXP workshops
organised by ISOC
• ISOC awarded a grant by Google to extend its Internet
exchange point (IXP) activities in emerging markets.
10. 0
Kyrgyz Republic: IXP Work (2015)
•IXP roundtable: Business level
introduction of IXPs to government,
network operators and technical experts.
•ISOC study on Kyrgyz Internet
Environment: Specific
recommendations for next steps to the
Kyrgyz Telecommunication Operators
Association (who runs IXP)
•BGP training: Technical training on
peering/ BGP to engineers from local
ISPs.
•Next steps: Visit to a European IXP
and further technical training (tbc!)
11. 1
Georgia: IXP Workshop (2014)
- Workshop partners: GNCC, RIPE
NCC and EUR-IX.
- Attendees: Main telecoms operators,
ISPs, data center providers,
GRENA.
- Summary of issues raised:
IXP and competition in telecoms
market;
Private peering vs. public peering;
IXP neutrality: who and where;
Value add of IXPs;
Role of government in IXP
development.
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
Serves the economic, social, and educational needs of individuals throughout the world – today and in the future
We are also organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the premier Internet standards-setting body.
The Internet Society supports the evolution of the Internet through technical expertise, capacity building and innovation.
Costs:
Avoiding costs related to international traffic/ tromboning;
Reducing dependency on the incumbent;
Leveling the playing field for all ISPs.
Content & quality:
Reducing latency and improving user experience
Reinforcing local content eco-system: Internet infrastructure and service development (both local entrepreneurship and international investment)
Location for shared services, such as domain name servers (DNS), caching and time-servers.
So far IXPs have only emerged in about half the countries in the world, and these vary greatly in scale and effectiveness.
Ideally, IXPs are needed in every region in which different networks need to exchange local traffic. Deployment of IXPs are, however, sensitive to a variety of local constraints, and initiating and ensuring their efficient operation is not as simple as it would appear, especially in emerging markets (where IXPs are rare).
To this end, the 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.
Private peering agreements to exchange traffic in place -> IXP spoke
The next stage: IXP hub
Are global content providers present: Google, Akamai, Verisign?
Expanding content hosting industry
Different routes to access local content in developing markets:
Baseline assumptions:
No competitive domestic data hosting facilities
No IXP
International transit more expensive than peering locally at IXP
1. International routing -> high international transit costs; lower data hosting costs.
Impact on Internet eco-system:
Higher local connectivity prices
High latency and low quality for end-users
Potential barrier for local businesses to grow
2. Local routing -> low transit costs, higher local data hosting costs (due to economies of scale and power costs)
Impact on local Internet eco-system:
Lower local connectivity prices
Lower latency and better quality for end-users -> drives further demand
Encourages local businesses to develop new local content and attract international content e.g. Google cache
Government can support by hosting e-government services in a local data centre (DCaaS)
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.