Re: Tanzanian ISPs move closer to establishing an Internet exchange

[Brian Candler <B.Candler at pobox.com>]

On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 11:22:20PM -0700, Bill Woodcock wrote:
>       On Tue, 13 May 2003, Brian Candler wrote:
>     > On the generous assumption that within-country traffic counts for
>     > 20% of volume...
> 
> That's not a generous assumption, that's a very low assumption,
> particularly as it doesn't take into account the return of hosting which
> occurs in the wake of exchange construction.

I thought we were talking _current_ traffic patterns and spending, but
anyway my figure was just a guess.

> Try 35% domestic and 50%
> intra-African as better numbers.  Which puts us at a $800M total bandwidth
> + transit market.

OK I'll take the 35%. The intra-African traffic is still going to use the
international links and will not be affected by the installion of in-country
exchange points, so that puts the total transit cost at $1.2bn, and that
still seems very high to me.

One day, there may be pan-African ISPs which run their own backbones across
the continent. Even then they will still peer individually at the national
peering points.

>     > It's as much about quality of service as anything.
> 
> Bzzt.  Try again.  That's self-congratultory bullshit.  In the world the
> rest of us live in, cost always trumps quality of service.

In the world I live in, there are many competing ISPs who need to retain
their customers, and selling the service at the lowest cost is not the only
factor.

But anyway, that was meant to be in answer to: "You're saying that if Africa
were like the rest of the world, IXes would be a profit-making enterprise,
although they aren't in the rest of the world?"

I was actually agreeing with your point. Speaking with my "rest of the
world" hat on, there's no money to be made in IXPs. People do make a little
money on the colo side (having an IXP in your colo site makes your colo more
attractive, which usually means the colo ends up subsidising the IXP).

Anyway, I still say that international transit is so cheap now that (here)
the main driver for IXP membership is to avoid stupid traffic patterns which
give poor service. And if you have *large* amounts of traffic where the
finances are important, then you don't use the IXP anyway because it
wouldn't have the capacity, and because you don't have direct technical
control over it (quality of service again); you peer privately.

>     > That was the question, but the answer is on his stolen laptop :-)
> 
> And what there is deserving of a smiley-face?

That he doesn't keep *any* backups (not even hardcopies)?? That's not
setting a very good example for the Afnog students! But we've all been
there, and the smiley was to indicate that I was not intending any criticism
of Brian.

Cheers,

Brian.

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