Re: Is the MIXP a white elephant?

From: S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2015 01:39:13 -0700

Hi Daniel,
At 14:03 23-10-2015, Daniel Shaw wrote:
>It depends. How do you connect to the internet? (does *your* isp
>peer?) What do you consider
>"faster"? (gaming latency? Speed/throughput of a Linux .iso download?
>Perceived page load time on your favourite new site?) What to you is
>"the Internet"? Is it Facebook? Is it your local internet banking? Is it
>your inter-company business emails? Is it Skype calls to your aunty in
>Australia?

Was there any study before setting up this MIXP? If that is the case
it would explain what would be improved, e.g. gaming, latency, Skype
calls, etc.

>The article is obviously making generalised sweeping statements. It
>should be obvious from the above questions that of course an IXP located
>anywhere cannot and will not magically make all of "the internet" faster
>for every user in that locality all of the time.

Ok.

>However, if you consider "The Internet" as the sum of all connections
>that all the billions of people around the globe use it for.. And if you
>then consider that for a number of people, certain data they want to
>access, they can access quicker than yesterday.. Then as a whole, on
>aggregate, wouldn't you agree "The Internet" is a little bit faster
>today?

It would be better to have facts to show what is better or worse
instead of considering the sum of all connections across the
globe. When the government sends money people ask questions if they
believe that the money is not well-spent. I would not give the above
answer. :-)

>.. and yet you focus on measurements over a few weeks or months past.
>Think about a 5 or 10 year plan. Where do you want your local internet
>to be then? Are there a whole number of barriers to achieving Internet
>nirvana? Does the existence of an IXP lower or remove any of those
>barriers at all? Could it help enable businesses, start-ups or access to
>education in the future?
>It might. It might not. But *could* it?

There is a government plan for the next five or ten years. There
were several government plans before that. You could review those
government plans and comment on the mailing list about the results
which have been achieved. It would help the subscribers to the
mailing list assess the viability of another five or ten year plan.

>Then read it over again and understand that measuring value of an IXP is
>all economics and very little else.

That is what I have been trying to point out. :-) The only
discussion about the technical side was about latency. I was not
disagreeing with you about the Layer 2 stuff.

>Then consider that for the time being at least the opex cost of a
>network to participate at the MIXP is pretty much zero.
>Then read the above again and think about why it's worthwhile for
>network operators to make the once off capex investment to get
>connected, no matter how small the total traffic they might pass
>initially.

I assume that you provided the link which you sent me to the ISPs in
Mauritius. Were they convinced?

>You may then ask again about the benefit to a home user... Well, it's
>simple if we stop thinking about how the next youtube video loads and
>start thinking about the big picture of the economy and the business of
>network, internet service and hosting providers.

I prefer not to have to wait for the youtube buffering. The few home
users I have spoken to also prefer that. I doubt that they will
listen to me if I start talking about the big picture of the economy.

>If networks can make cost savings by exchanging traffic, does this
>provide a way for smaller networks to remain competitive in a tough
>market? Do more smaller networks existing foster competition? Does
>competition keep service levels going up and costs down?

One of the persons on this mailing list contacted a small ISP. The
ISP did not have a "modem" in stock to provide internet service. I
don't think that the competition which we saw this year is related to
the MIXP as the describe in prices occurred before August.

>b) A final little exercise:
>Use your favourite DNS tool (dig, nslookup etc) to check the name
>servers for your ccTLD .MU - then do a traceroute to each one and see
>what happens with one of them.

The following is about the .mu ccTLD:
http://www.elandsys.com/~sm/mu-tld-dns-issue-2014-september.html The
.mu ccTLD issues have been discussed on this mailing list
previously. I am currently one of the representatives of the group
for the .mu issues.

I report the DNS issues I come across as it may help other persons in
Mauritius. Did you report the issue affecting the .MU ccTLD?

Regards,
S. Moonesamy
Received on Sat Oct 24 2015 - 08:39:53 PST

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