[Afpif] South Africa gets free national Peering ...

[Mark Tinka]

On Monday, March 26, 2012 12:04:26 PM Nishal Goburdhan 
wrote:

> that said - we'd all agree that finding new ways of
> reliably changing traffic cheaper is a generally not a
> Bad Thing.   and if the new exchange points can foster
> this, then they can only bring more good to the ZA
> peering environment. but, will these exchange points
> redefine traffic exchange in ZA? i don't think so...at
> least, not for a while.

What will happen is if more folk start co-lo'ing with Teraco 
and other carrier-neutral data centres, then they will go 
the route Equinix and others have done to incorporate data-
centre-owned exchange points within the data centre so 
customers can interconnect.

Data centre exchange points don't necessarily compete with 
other entrenched exchange points so much as compliment them 
(although this can get interesting if, say, a carrier-
neutral facility were hosting a popular/national exchange 
point and also running one of its own).

Whatever the case, operators will vote where their wallets 
take them, although it would still make sense to peer both 
at Teraco and at JINX (for instance) if other ISP's at 
either location were only located in one of those locations 
(assuming, of course, running a loop and peering is cheaper 
than transit).

Mark.