[ixp] others at ixp - failure of ISPs?

[Michuki Mwangi]

Hi MT, et al,

Mark Tinka wrote:
> On Tuesday 02 June 2009 03:39:29 pm Antonio Godinho wrote:
> 
> 
> Issues have been witnessed where incumbents (who normally 
> move the most traffic around) are forced to peer with all, 
> as well. We've seen cases where incumbents fill up their 
> port capacity on the switch, are reluctant to upgrade their 
> connectivity to said switch as it may mean putting in a new 
> router, running new fibre in case the peering router is 
> remote, purchasing new line cards for their end, e.t.c., and 
> end up withdrawing some of their prefixes to ease on the 
> congestion, and in fact, encourage peering members to opt 
> for their "paid" service if they want better access.

This is highly reminiscent of the Kenyan experience with the incumbent
telco to the extent that it put in an E1 link to one content provider
(Revenue Authority Services) to whom they required good connectivity
else they were loosing clients to ISPs.

 Of
> course, in such cases, government/regulator intervention may 
> force them to clean up their act at the exchange point, but 
> how sustainable that is is a good question, especially if 
> government priorities shift, later on, to other socio-
> economic issues.
> 

entirely dependent how clued in your Government/regulator is. Having the
 right folks lobbying within their circles can help smoothen the issues
out. By and large maybe doing some policy workshops (read layer 9)
around the issues maybe a starting point.

To fix the issue with the incumbent was achieved through formally
depeering them. Then local community then started fussing over their
inability to route traffic locally (on local mailing lists) and this
appears to have done the trick in getting them back on track with right
capacity and announcing all their prefixes.


> As bandwidth begins to pick up the exchange point, and some 
> ISP's start to become more competitive than others, it 
> becomes interesting to maintain, in practice, that each 
> participating member has to peer with the other, short of a 
> government/regulator order.
> 

The key is making the IXP attractive enough (with content) for folks to
want to peer. Having key infrastructure in IXPs is one way to go about
this i.e root-servers, ntp, and ccTLD available at an IXP is a start.
I suppose talking to the likes of Google for their G2C nodes would be
something to create interest around the IXP.

> But it may be many years before anything like this begins to 
> manifest; or not.
> 

I think its always useful to maintain both models with voluntary
multilateral peering and bilateral peering. IMHO it means that the IXP
will attract both big and small as it evolves as opposed to loosing most
members to smaller IXPs that are more designed/suited for their peering
needs.

Regards,

Michuki.