Diary of an Internet Service Provider in Nigeria [DisPING]

By Sunday Afolayan

SKANNET Joins NIXP
Mohammed Rudman the CEO of the Nigeria Internet Exchange Point (NIXP) is a guy with a lot of energy, passion and a good attitude. He called me again early October and said "Oga … you have to connect to the Internet exchange point O!" We took up his challenge, and the link came up on Friday 5th October 2007.

An Internet Exchange point, according to Wikipedia is a physical infrastructure that allows different (ISPs to exchange Internet Traffic between their networks by means of mutual peering agreements, which allow traffic to be exchanged without cost. IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic which must be delivered via their upstreams, thereby reducing the Average Per-Bit Delivery Cost of their service. Furthermore, the increased number of paths learned through the IXP improves routing efficiency and fault-tolerance.

Internet Exchange Point (IXP) is not the same as a National Gateway.

Exchange points are necessary for the following reasons:
1. Cost Reduction. Traffic meant for peer ISPs are not sent to their upstream and through foreign lands, but exchanged within the country
2. Enhanced performance. Whereas Satellite communication adds a minimum delay of 550ms (Called Latency), local connectivity via an exchange point adds not more than 50ms latency. That is just 10%.
3. Local content stimulation. By allowing application providers locate their Servers at the exchange point, the cost of developing, hosting and accessing local content is very minimal.

"National Gateway" on the other hand, would probably satisfy the following:
1. Provide a 'plug point' (socket) for Government to lawfully intercept Internet traffic in and out of a country, and probably create a single point of failure, if the entire traffic for a whole country is injected at just one point.
2. Increase the efficiency of Internet regulation with an emphasis on security and restriction of information. aka Dark Ages.

It is convenient to use the fact that a number of ISPs will be at the Internet Exchange Point, as the launch pad for a National Gateway – a fast dying call for anarchy. It is prone to failure. Ask the Kenyans about their experience!

So … back to the Nigeria Internet exchange Point. NIXP currently operates the Mandatory Multilateral peering policy. This means that ISPs connected to the exchange must peer with other ISPs present at the Exchange. This was done to reduce the members' entry cost to the exchange, and simplify things. The alternative - Bilateral Peering Policy gives ISPs the flexibility of deciding who to peer with, but tends to give some ISPs the opportunity to play "big boys". Not when there is a culture of mistrust, and "I can do it alone" as we have in Nigeria.

For any organization to connect to the Exchange point, two resources are required (Both obtainable from AfriNIC – http://www.afrinic.net):
1. An IP address block. SKANNET's Address block in Ibadan is 80.250.32.0/22
2. An Autonomous System Number (ASN). SKANNET's ASN is 21452.

A special connectivity protocol, called the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is required to link systems together at the exchange point, so that they can exchange traffic (peering) without an ISP pushing its own traffic through another ISP's link (Transiting). Of course, transiting is also possible, if any two ISPs agree to it.

Which ISPs are at the exchange point? The last time I looked, there were 8 other advertised networks, belonging to 6 organizations (apart form the Exchange Point itself). I looked up the owners of the address blocks in the AfriNIC WHOIS database:
1. 41.221.160.0/20 - Swift Networks Ltd
2. 41.222.64.0/21 - Swift Networks Ltd
3. 80.248.0.0/20 - 21st Century Technologies Ltd
4. 80.250.32.0/22 - SKANNET
5. 196.200.64.0/20 - Tara Systems Ltd
6. 196.200.112.0/20 - Accelon
7. 196.207.4.0/22 - Netcomm
8. 196.216.148.0/22 - NIXP Exchange fabric
9. 196.220.16.0/20 - Netcomm

The quality of the link to the exchange is good. Here is the trace from my home/office to Tara Systems' network:

C:\Documents and Settings\sfolayan>tracert www.metrong.com

Tracing route to www.metrong.com [196.200.64.11] over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192-168-1-01.skannet.com [192.168.1.1]
2 57 ms 63 ms 44 ms ib-ap-oshin.skannet.com [80.250.34.254]
3 50 ms 75 ms 93 ms ib-core12.skannet.com [80.250.32.39 ]
4 150 ms 144 ms 147 ms ib-br1-core2.skannet.com [80.250.32.25]
5 36 ms 57 ms 68 ms losnixp-ib-br1.skannet.com [80.250.32.53]
6 415 ms 392 ms 407 ms 196-200-78-1.metrong.com [196.200.78.1 ]
7 561 ms 426 ms 401 ms 196-200-64-11.metrong.com [196.200.64.11]

Trace complete.

So how did SKANNET, an ISP located in Ibadan, connect to the exchange point in Lagos? By buying transit from VDT Communications, an ISP that has IP connectivity between Lagos and Ibadan. Well … Still considering joining the exchange point? You obviously love Latency … you will battle with it for some time to come!!

SF.

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