[governance] Africa to launch own Internet exchange point

Mon Oct 22 06:01:17 EDT 2012

 Parminder's questioning is perfectly justified. I'd add another question : why are African IXP in place and idle ? What a waste of precious money which would be employed for useful needs ... The root cause is always the same : a lack of consultation between the main actors of the ICT domain and the neoliberal credo "let's build, they'll come".This model failed to develop consistently any network at any level in Africa ! However, AU and the ITU still support it. At the very beginning of the WSIS I proposed -with the agreement of the CS Plenary- that NW operators and ICT main actors select the relevant sites where IXPs should be created having in mind both the (present ans future) Internet traffic to be exchanged there and the state and evolution of the telecom backbone networks. This proposal, although it has been reiterated different times in different prepcoms and during the WSIS follow-up process, has never collected the consens of the main parties involved, namely the AU and the ITU. "Cherchez l'erreur" as we use to say in France. Best Jean-Louis Fullsack BTW : I'd also Thank Mawaki Chango for his 10.19. mail to the list. I'll try to answer his questions later. 

> Message du 20/10/12 13:35
> De : "parminder" 
> A : governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> Copie à : 
> Objet : Re: [governance] Africa to launch own Internet exchange point
> 
>
> Isnt one (biggest?) of the reasons of failures of most public interest IXPs is that there is no regulatory mechanism to ensure that traffic is exchanged at given national or regional exchanges, like there is for telephones. For which reason big ISPs/ carriers simply refuse to exchange traffic with the smaller ones in order to keep the market power advantage and not allow a level playing field. Just curious to know.
> 
> parminder 
> 
> 
> 
> On Friday 19 October 2012 11:38 PM, Mawaki Chango wrote:
>Thank you, Dawit, for this clarification that helps find answers to my
questions.

Mawaki

On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 9:07 AM, Dawit Bekele wrote:
Hi all,

As the implementer of the African Union's African Internet Exchange System
(AXIS) project under which this workshop in Gambia is organized, I would
like to give some information on this particular workshop and the AXIS
project in general. The AXIS project is an African Union project that aims
at promoting the development of IXPs around Africa. The first phase of the
project consists of organizing IXP Best practice workshops in 30 African
countries where there is no IXP followed by technical workshops in these
same countries. The Internet Society has been selected by the African
Regional Bureau to implement this phase in a period of 2 years. I have
attached a press release concerning AXIS (sorry the website is not ready
yet).

The African Union and indeed the Internet society are conscious that setting
up an IXP is not an end by itself and there are many IXPs that never took
off from the ground. This is why the Best Practice workshops will discuss
about what works and what doesn't work based one the experiences of IXPs in
Africa ad around the world. The facilitators that we send to these workshops
have practical experience in developing IXPs and can advise the stakeholders
invited at the workshops on the way forward.

As David rightly mentioned the training is technology neutral. Every country
follows its own pace in developing the IXPs. The Internet Society and the
African Union can only advise the stakeholders on the steps to take. We
organized these workshops in four countries in the last two months: Burkina
Faso, Burundi, Senegal and Gambia. We will organize the following workshops
in the coming two months:

Namibia 23 - 25 October
Guinea 30 Oct- Nov 1
Niger 6-8 November
Benin 13-15 November

Most countries where we have organized the workshops have adopted a clear
plan to set-up an IXP within a few months and established task forces to
that effect, as in the case of the Gambia.

Finally, AXIS is not an isolated program but part of a holistic ICT
development plan for Africa (African Regional Action Plan on the Knowledge
Economy -ARAPKE). AXIS is one of the 11 flagship projects of the ARAPKE
(attached description).

Best regards,
Dawit Bekele
Director, African Regional Bureau
Internet Society

-----Original Message-----
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-
request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Mawaki Chango
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2012 1:33 PM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Jean-Louis FULLSACK
Subject: Re: [governance] Africa to launch own Internet exchange point

Thanks, Jean-Louis! That was part of the reason why I was surprised an IXP
in
Africa would make such headline still today, and why I was wondering about
any integrated strategy from the part of AU. Without a vision that takes
into
account elements you have outlined, it's hard to appreciate real, long
term
progress.

In your view, what are we missing right now in order to develop a
"consistent, survivable network" keeping in mind that Africa is a huge
place
where policy is mainly made through government planning, etc.?
Where does it make more sense to start from --both technically and
strategically-- in order to realize that "minimum of consistency"
which can make any subsequent efforts more efficient? I think any long
term
advocacy effort in Africa should itself be led by a vision of this kind,
where
policy goals are well informed by technology capabilities and best
practices,
and then try to win over policy-makers to it.

A whole other challenge is, of course, to get policy-makers and any
incumbent stakeholders to embrace the notion (and reality) of creative
destruction, which has never been a given in any place at any era.
Here I can only think of CS using a range of strategies and tactics and
sharing
information globally in order to help shape the events and try to shift
the
power dynamics.

Best,

Mawaki
otherwise Africa Internet Policy coordinator at APC, the one and only
Association for Progressive Communications :)

On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 3:36 AM, Jean-Louis FULLSACK
wrote:
Dear members of the list

The basic issue in Africa isn't the lack of IXPs, since there are
around thirty ones. Of course this number is to be extended and
spatial distribution is to be improved, and the Gambia IXP is a step
in this direction.

But there is a lack of appropriate networks at the national, regional
and continental level. In most cases there are a more or less
continuous series of optical fiber or microwave routes but not a
consistent, survivable network. This strongly limits the very
functions of the IXPs i.e. switching, routing and thereby maintaining
IP traffic that is exchanged in specific spaces (country, sub-region,
part of African continent) in their respective limits, saving high
costs of transiting through out-of-Africa Internet nodes and
consequently
bandwidth waste on international routes.

Finally, there are severe power issues in most countries that limit
seriously the availability of both the IXPs and the interconnecting
network(s).

Of course, some progress has been done for improving this situation
but the
(expensive) efforts lack a minimum of consistency and therefore take
too much time for being efficient. Reponsibility for this
mismanagement is mainly the neoliberal ruling that promotes hard
competition instead of genuine networking, but also the African Union
and the ITU, despite the n°1 and 2 of which are Africans.

Best regards

Jean-Louis Fullsack

Message du 18/10/12 21:10
De : "David Conrad"
A : governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Copie à :
Objet : Re: [governance] Africa to launch own Internet exchange point

Hi Norbert,
On Oct 18, 2012, at 12:18 PM, Norbert Klein wrote:
I thought it was also interesting that this effort of ISOC is
reported here by Xinhua via the China Daily. Maybe an indication
that the internationally experienced and active hardware supplier
Huawei will help the Banjul efforts, and whoever will by trained
with the experience of ISOC when new IXP will be set up in more
places
in Africa.
My understanding is that the training (done by folks from ISOC
partnering with AfriNIC and other Africa-based organizations is
technology neutral. I'm told by one of the folks involved in Gambia
that they expect the IXP to be set up in 6 months or so. As far as I
know, there hasn't been any decision on hardware in the IXP.

Regards,
-drc

__________________________________________________________
__
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t

__________________________________________________________
__
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t

>

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20121022/f39f5fb4/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t