Keeping local traffic local
By Haru Mutasa

Somewhere on the African continent someone has just sent an email to a friend. The message embarks on a long journey out of Africa to the United States and back again to Africa where it finally reaches his friend – who is only just next door!

Not only is this process time consuming, it comes at a hefty price.
"Africa pays around $US500 million a year to send traffic out of the continent," said Russell Southwood, CEO of Balancing Act in the United Kingdom, "and the whole point of Internet exchange points are that they help keep local traffic local."

Desire Karyabwite, an IP coordinator for the E-strategy Unit gave one potential solution to Africa's dilemma, "We need to establish institutions at national and regional levels to keep traffic local and reduce international traffic and related costs. What we need is Interconnectivity."

He said the challenges of interconnectivity include, amongst others, cost of maintenance, administration and equipment.

"There are two types of interconnectivity African countries can opt for to keep local traffic local. These are peering and transit," said Karyabwite, "In peering Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide interconnectivity to each others customers," he explained, "but in transit, one ISP sells access to all destinations in its routings.

"The best option is peering because it is more cost effective on ISPs when they share equipment and bandwidth amongst themselves. Therefore one saves money, time and the quality is even better."

For all this to work Karyabwite said African states need to develop clear interconnectivity policies. "We have to change our mentality to make his a reality," he said, "We have to outline issues such as payment of fees, connection agreements and termination contracts. Other issues that have to be considered include security as well as hardware and soft ware requirements."

With already nine (Internet Exchange Points) IXPs on the continent Brian Longwe, general manager of African ISP Association said the winds of change have begun blowing across Africa.

"IXPs are a revolution that will hopefully sweep across this continent and unite Africa," he said optimistically, "If we think of the Internet as a physical structure then IXPs are the building blocks for the Internet."

The whole process is not as expensive as some people might think.
"It is not that expensive to set up an exchange point, in fact the socio-political cost is where the hidden costs lie," he explained, "It is all too often about the people behind these processes. They have to start trusting each other to cooperate. It is a step in maturity and leaving competitive issues at the door."

Six of the nine IXPs were set up in the last two years, a situation Longwe said he was not too happy about. "This is really a deplorable state of affairs in Africa. We have a lot of work to do and our work is cut out for us," he encouraged delegates at the sixth International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Telecom Africa conference in Cairo Egypt, "Already an African Internet Exchange Task Force has been set up to establish up to 30 IXPs over the next three years."

The success of the task force could mean an exciting beginning for African Internet users and give a new meaning to keeping local traffic local.

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