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

[Nishal Goburdhan]

On Mar 21, 2012, at 7:11 PM, Michuki Mwangi wrote:

> Considering that AfPIF-3 will be in South Africa - am curious about this
> developments.
> 
> Teraco and NAPAfrica introduce free national peering points and redefine
> the Internet business in South Africa - what does this mean for JINX,
> CINX and DINX?
> 
> http://www.datacentres.com/link.php?dcpage=http://www.teraco.co.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=200

the article is a little misleading, so let's debunk those exaggerations first...

first, some background: the existing JINX (johannesburg), CINX (cape town) and upcoming DINX (durban) exchange points  in ZA are "managed" by the Internet Service Providers Association - www.ispa.org.za.  i say "managed" because ISPA is a member oraganisation, and, in as far as the IXes go, really only serves as a co-ordination point for the different ISPs to set policy.
so, it's really the ISPs setting policy for themselves for the IXes.
it's true that, years ago, to peer at one of these exchange points, you needed to be an ISPA member.
but that restriction was removed several years ago - the ISPs realised that limiting your exchange point to either only local service providers, or ones belonging to a particular organisation, only served to limit the scope - and thus the utility - of the exchange point.  policy changed, and with the removal of this single restriction, these exchange points in south africa are now 'open' to all.
this happened circa 2007/8.

so apart from the history lesson :-) the message here is that there is already a framework for open peering in ZA - and looking at the JINX and CINX statsistics (stats.jinx.net.za & stats.cinx.net.za) this seems to be quite successful.
what seems to be different with the 'new' exchange is that:
* there is no port cost;  the article isn't clear, but i'm assuming that 'free' just means no port cost, since most peering traffic changed in ZA is already settlement-free.
* they are starting with bgp route servers;  a good thing for new IXes, and, something i know that the JINX/CINX are working on now anyway.

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.

#1 - most traffic exchange is still private, and unlikely to change.
if you've snuck a peek at the graphs above, you'll see a quite healthy measure of traffic exchange.
what you don't see if the traffic that's exchange via private interconnects;  and that's easily the bulk of traffic exchanged in ZA.
at $employer-1, we changed more traffic with a single peer via private interconnects, than the sum of the IX at the time - although the IX has grown significantly, it's reasonable to assume that those relationships - and relative traffic volumes - haven't changed too much, as there hasn't been a major change to knock out any of the larger players in ZA.

#2 - circuits costs drive interconnection points
providers peer where it's convenient, and cheap.  even though the monopoly on last mile access in broken in ZA, last mile connections are still not cheap*.  so a peer already at JINX/CINX will be unlikely to want to connect to a new IX, in the city, especially if it's not cheap/free.  
and until 
* terraco starts owning more data centre builds, 
* more content is put onto their network, 
* transmission costs drop making it cheaper to interconnect...
i doubt that the peering landscape is likely to change for a while.

the good news is that there is a whackload of fibre being trenched in ZA's cities.  and as this drives down intra-city connectivity costs, there's room for expansion for other exchange points, as mentioned.  how many is enough, and if this is a good thing, is left as a discussion point for the list.

#3 - broadband usage
i'll reserve comment on this, as there's meant to be an announcement about LLU Real Soon Now...   ;-)

all thing considered, i with them luck.  anything that works for a more resilient internet is good! 

--n.

* as a real life lesson, in its first instantiation, the cape town exchange worked for a few years.  
the ISPA went through the process of tendering to host the exchange, and a new operator won the rights to host this.
that meant everyone disconnecting from the IX, moving tail circuits, etc, etc.
that was considered too much work, and was too expensive - it was cheaper to consolidate peering into your monthly transit bill, and get a better rate for higher commits, than run a separate tail circuit for peering, so CINX disappeared...

<plug> 
if you're still interested in some history, here's a little background on how the IX environment grew in ZA:
http://www.menog.net/menog-meetings/menog3/presentations/goburdhan-za-peering-update.pdf, or http://files.controlfreak.co.za/menog3/
</plug>