IXP session in Durban

[Frank Habicht]

On 8/8/2007 5:59 AM, Karen Rose wrote:
> ... it would be helpful if the list could discuss the kinds 
> of issues that would be good cover at this session.  

Hi,

Regarding the topic of Interconnection, I think the Abuja session has
shown that there is unfortunately currently not enough effort (or
incentive, or justification) to establish links/infrastructure across
borders.
When we talked about getting links between national aggregation points
(also called IXPs), the need for supporting data of current traffic was
mentioned.

I'd like to get some measurements (in swahili "vipimo").
I've started a write-up that is _far_from_finished_ :  
http://vipimo.eaix.net/

with Perl programming, I'm at a stage where a script takes a list of flows,
compares them with a list cidr netblocks and counting packets & bytes
to&from
"places"/countries/aggregation points/IXPs
on a Pentium3 with 700MHz it compares 281,000 flows to 162 netblocks
and adds up and stores in RRD within 22seconds 
(how many flows does a bigger African! ISP have on transit links per time?)

Please have a look at he docs (same doc, 3 formats) at the site above.
I want to get input, have already received some.
It can work for one IXP only. It can also work with as many as we have.
Some ISPs might want to do this analysis on their own. They can.
But I have hope that from it we can get a better picture (than we have
now) as to how much traffic goes (via satellite, paying Intelsat)
between Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. And also for the ISPs, I trust they
can get a picture about how much a direct link would be worth to them.

I see a good chance that some ISPs won't go into the effort to find out
this information by themselves and this should assist.

Expected output data:
- for ISP A in country W : graphs of its traffic to public peering
networks at IXP in country X, and country Y, and country Z
- same for ISP B in country W
- similar for ISP C in country X - stats to countries W, Y, Z
this above data not available to any other ISP!
- for IXP 1 in country W - graphs of the aggregate traffic of all its
local ISPs together, with countries X, Y, Z
this should be public and available for all.

note: is some significant ISPs don't want to send in their netflow data,
some extrapolation can be done for the last output data...

This project needs a lot of buy-in from IXPs and ISPs, that's why I'm
trying to make all methods, issues, etc public .
You think it can be done? Please give me any input you can.

Assuming we don't finalise on this list via email, I'd like to discuss
it at the meeting.

Greetings,
Frank