[menog] Peering

Wed Aug 1 04:08:11 GMT 2007

All,

Hopefully we'll see one in the UAE ;) soon.

The UAE TRA has plans to establish a NAP or an IX in the UAE in
association with the Local telecom operators (Etisalat and Du) to serve
the gulf region. There have been many discussions and an industry
working group has been created to study the model and the requirements.
The ITU is supporting this project and many organizations have showed
interest in being part of it. We seek cooperation from regional network
operators.

As far as having doubts about the traffic exchanged between operators in
the region, I don't think we need to prove that we currently have enough
traffic to go through the peering links as having IX will definitely
attract content providers and encourage investment in cable.

Regards,
Abdul Rahman Al Marzouqi
Telecommunication Regulatory Authority

P. O. Box:         116688, Dubai, UAE
Tel:                   (+971) 4 362 6666
Dir:                   (+971) 4 362 6673
Fax:                  (+971) 4 362 6677
                        www.tra.ae

Sunday-Thursday, 7am - 3 pm

-----Original Message-----
From: menog-bounces at menog.net [mailto:menog-bounces at menog.net] On Behalf
Of Fahad AlShirawi
Sent: 31 July 2007 22:01
To: 'Gaurab Raj Upadhaya'; 'Abeer Kamal'
Cc: menog at menog.net; 'Salman Al-Mannai'
Subject: RE: [menog] Peering 

Gaurab,

The natural location for an IX SHOULD be Saudi Arabia. However,
restrictions
make it impossible. Thus, the next best thing is to have an IX where the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a stake and buys into the concept and where
connectivity between the IX and the Kingdom is available at no
additional
charge. The second most important place would be the UAE. If both those
two
are in it, we can have the first true IX. 

And I'm glad Salman is on this list ;) He has a LOT to add ;)

Fahad.

-----Original Message-----
From: menog-bounces at menog.net [mailto:menog-bounces at menog.net] On Behalf
Of
Gaurab Raj Upadhaya
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 6:09 PM
To: Abeer Kamal
Cc: menog at menog.net; 'Salman Al-Mannai'
Subject: Re: [menog] Peering 

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Hi,

Abeer Kamal wrote:
> there is not enough existing traffic to enable cost effective peering.

Umm.. for me that's a very very generalized statement and almost
oxymoronic. May be that's me - because i (and am sure a few others on
this list;-)) have heard that statement being made a lot without
evidence.

- From my own experience on IXPs availability of peering paths actually
create new avenues of content and traffic. Its' not really about
shifting your existing traffic - it's probably more about making the
path ready for growth. And people always seem to forget the volume of
e-mail traffic that goes across in the region.

Actually i will quote Salman here.. (paraphrasing what he told me in
MENOG1)..

"why is it that even after this major upgrade from 2Mbps to 100Mbps, we
still have 60% traffic on this link to Dubai"

Your ISPs may not be seeing more intra-gulf traffic, because they don't
even know what's in the gulf. thus, my question would be back to - what
is available and where - that would let me take large volumes of traffic
across the countries to a central location. Few factors to look at a)
Which countries have good environment and b) lets multiple people sink
fiber on the ground, and c) lets foreign companies setup business with
minimal of fuss and d) is easy to travel to and from, and e) has a large
enough local Internet economy to kick start the IX. and f) have either
existing or future planned international FO.

Would be interested to see which location would fit most of the above
criteria. let the discussion go further, i am sure everyone would want
to speak up here..

thanks
  - gaurab
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