2015 11 10 BPF Enabling environments to establish successful IXPS Workshop Room 5

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

***

>> JANE COFFIN:  Good morning, everyone, we're going the start in about three minutes.  We are just waiting for some more colleagues to join and some to join online.  Thank you.

And as a housekeeping matter, I think this is translated.  So when people speak, if you could speak at a pace that would be good for translation or someone listening in another country.

Also, if you could take a look at your devices and please put them on mute, vibrate, whatever is quiet.  And that will help so that we don't interrupt each other.  Thank you.

And we have colleagues in the room who are tweeting out.  And we'd love it if you're also showing this on social media.  And, again, we should start in about two minutes.  We're just giving people time to join after having had coffee and to join online.  Thank you.

Good morning and welcome to the IXP Internet Exchange Point Best Practices session.  We appreciate your attendance.  And we'll go across the table and tell you who we are.  But first we'd like to also mention some colleagues who we've been working with for over six months on this process.  I'm Jane Coffin from the Internet Society.  Wim will give you an overview of what we've been doing and how it's been done.  Malcolm Hutty, to my right, will introduce himself from LINX, the London Internet Exchange.  The two of us will be going back and forth about some of the best the practices that we put together in the report.  But the "we" in this instance is a very broad group of individuals from around the world, from Africa to Asia to Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and elsewhere.  

Three very important people who are not here are Gaël Hernandez, who is working very closely with OECD now and had worked with Packet Clearinghouse, one of the key partners who does IXP development around the world.  

Chip Sharp from Cisco, who is home sick and was going to be listening remotely and we're hoping they can participate remotely.  

And Kyle Spencer.  Kyle is with the Ugandan XP, UIXP.  He's also a key member of what's called the Internet Exchange Federation.  

So those are key people that are not here today, key people that Wim put together to acknowledge some of the efforts, and some of the people from Brazil, as well, from NIC.BR, and my colleague, and others.  

Without more delay, I will turn over to Wim and then Malcolm.  We thank you for coming.  This is a really great team of people that have put this work together.  It's been a cross sector of people that help host.  From IXP workshops to fora to people who help put the boxes and wires together, so to speak, and make the connectivity happen.  We'd like to focus that we are looking at the broad theme on connecting the next billion and it really does start to be the important local, regional work that we all do together to help amplify connectivity around the world.  So I'm turning it over to Wim.

>> WIM DEGEZELLE:  It's working okay.  I'm Wim Degezelle.  I'm working at this moment consultant for the IGF Secretariat and the IGF and UN really wanted to do some substantive work on these best practice forums.  So I'm here    well, I have had the experience to work during the last couple of months with some wonderful people that basically came up with all the input and the wisdom to put in the Best Practice Forum in the outcome document and which I had to, well, try and put together and sometimes wake up people and say "don't forget that you promised yesterday something to do." But all went well.

And do I handle Malcolm to introduce yourself?  Or do you want me to give the   

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  I work for the London Internet exchange, one of the larger Internet exchanges in Europe.  I also work for EURIX, which is the European Exchange Point of Internet.  And I work on behalf of government relations, government affairs, policy.

And before I talk a little bit about the process we went through during the last month, I think the three of us but I think our whole group wants to thank Michael who is sitting in the back    well helps to take part of the remote communication, but during the last weeks when the document really gets to its final draft form, spent a lot of hours helping us well to change, make little changes and make sure that it turns up from to dog really nice and readable.

Okay.  Will et me now quickly take you if this works to what is the idea behind the Best Practice Forums?  Something new that were organized at the last time at the IGF, the idea is to bring during a period that goes before, well it started in May, but basically between IGF meetings, let the people work, bring stakeholders.  Bring experts together on specific teams and try to come up with something more tangible within document that's interesting for all that are interested in the topic.  It is a session on IXPs.  But the idea is really that there is a document based on the knowledge that exists already in the community.  That is presented and is not a guideline, but is not a way how to do it but is a collection of how people have done it and, well, positive results and successes and also their mistakes where sometimes have been very open about stuff that didn't work.

So, like I said, we started already in the month of May really working together.  How do you create a document?  You create the document with input.  You can say okay, we are three smart people, let's lock ourselves up in a room and then write something and give it to the world and say "okay, these are the best practice" but this is not the aim of this process.  The aim is really as many people as possible and we did it through different ways.  Open mailing list that everyone could register themselves and get input online.  There was input from WebEx meetings.  You just mentioned it's really next to each other at the table after we had our almost weekly or two weekly calls.

And the third step, which is also very important is the document was published on the IGF website and is still published there.  So people can say maybe it's too much experts to go in that weekly team, but I still want to contribute to the document with some experience from my country, you can do that on the online IGF website.

And the last and I'd hope one of the most important ways on how people can help to work on this document is by this session today because this session is also meant to get another    I mean your ideas, your experiences and your reactions on the document.

So, the draft document is online now.  I give you a quick overview of what's in it.  So check because the slide, my printing is a little bit small to read it from there.  It's not that my eyes are bad.  Not that.

So the document is constructed in a very simple way.  We look to who is coming to the IGF meeting and who could be interested.  So we start and Jane animal come many will explain further on that on the explanation of basically what's the role and benefits of an IXP.  We still don't know who is in the room who is listening or remotely but it should be interesting for everybody who says okay, IXPs, what is it about?

Then we look a little about it into the question about who are the main stakeholders?  Who are the main stakeholders not GIF, we all know the different types there.  But if you look on the national, regional IXP in their environment, who are basically the main parties that are playing a role or can play a role to an IXP start up and have success.

Then we look to the environment and we'll discuss some challenges and experiences and ways how IXPs have dealt with those challenges in the environment.

And the last point we will, I mean was stressed very much on the calls also what is now a successful IXP?  Because a lot of people the first reaction is you just look at volume, you see the volume of data that's passing to your IXP is growing, then your eye successful.  But I hope that at the end of this session today, you will all understand that IXPs are just more than that simple connection and that simple traffic.  It's a lot of more success of an IXP should be looked at in a much broader concept.  That's the document.  And we of course also added some nicer case studies from particular countries where they say we have a nice story to tell.  These are also in the document.  We have three now so that I hope maybe somebody would come up and say I really have an interesting story to add for my country.  Please let me know and we can also add it to this document.  Now just before I hand over because you're all dying to hear about the content, the next steps is now okay, we have this session.  The document like I said is still open online on the IGF website.  Contributions today are before the end of the week on the online platform will be included in the document and then well before the end of this month, will publish the official version of the best the practices on IXPs based on the draft document.  Probably it's not very helpful to put the links there to copy.  The documents are online, there is a PDF versions and the second link is the online platform to add comments.

That's all for me.  So I'm happy to hand over and hear also your input and your ideas on the content. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  And we should before we get into the heart of some of the issues that we discussed and some of the best the practices, we want to thank the hosts and in particular colleagues at CGI.BR.  We know how much work it takes to put on a meeting.  And this is a great facility.  So we thank them for all of the hard work on this.

I think as Wim has suggested, there are so many people who are involved but they come from different parts of the IX community and that's something that Malcolm will be focusing on with the stakeholder discussion.  But sitting at the table here, you have people who are involved in helping organise peering for IXP workshops and training.  And we look at it in a broader best practices in connecting the next billion perspective.  It is that building that connectivity and infrastructure, building the communities of interest and creating more human capacity because it is about enabling people at the local level, working with others who have built IXPs around the world to create that local capacity.  And that's critical.  And we've seen this amazing from the technical community, from the policy community, as well, working together and I often call these the home and trust network.  I may not know some of you but now you see me eye to eye.  And I didn't know Malcolm before six years ago and Wim just recently, but you start to trust each other and know that if people have done this work in other places, that you can start to work with them.  They're strong technical experts.  And the one thing that we often will say, too, at the Internet Society is that the technology works.  When you start to work with each other, this is not an empty development promise.  It takes hard work.  Not saying it's easy.  That's a very important thing to also put down on the table before we start.  It takes a lot of effort and it's usually a local champion that jumps in or two people or three people who start to get the ideas spread and do the work.  And many of us in our organizations, whether it's Packet Clearinghouse, IXF federation and the local IS associations, Internet Societies and others, the local Internet registries, our job is to help boost.  Some do the technical training.  Some pull the work together.  So as Wim had outlined for you in the report, Malcolm and I are going to speak briefly about the benefits of an IXP, and then we're going the hand off on the stakeholders and others.  But very simply put, when you look at this report as Wim had said, we're not telling you how to build an IXP.  That's a pretty clear.  You do that with people on the ground.  There needs to be a lot of face to face.

This isn't one of those things where there is great online training that can be done to prepare people, but you do need that hands on technical expertise.  So some of the top elements involved in the benefits of an Internet exchange point are reduction of network operational costs.  When you're coming together to peer at a common point, you reduce the network costs for you, the community, you're building human capacity, you're keeping local traffic local.  This is a very critical issue for an emerging market where you're going to bring latency down, the quality of service will go up.

In Ecuador alone, they were sending traffic out of Quito.  It was $100 per megabit per second.  When they put the IX in Quito and were ex changing traffic locally, a dollar per megabit per second.  This is enormous.  And this is through some of the research that have been done through some organizations that we work with that you see the benefits.  So it's that local traffic, local that does not mean that there aren't regional networks coming in because that's something you aspire to.  You want to have that connectivity coming in.  More networks and developing that infrastructure.  But there's that key thing of reducing the operational cost, if I can just build out to exchange traffic in a neutral area, perfect.

I start to also build the human capacity, which is something, it's a knock on effect or a side effect.  But critical because local network operators start to talk to each other.  And that's where some of the training with the regional Internet registries and some of the colleagues from, say, CGI with NIC.br, they actually had a meeting we had in Mozambique and did some training because the Portuguese speakers helped us for a week before appearing for them in Africa to train the local Internet community in Mozambique in August.  It was excellent.  So you have that person to person community building, the local technical side of things and then the local experts, they see how the IX will work, how the traffic is running more consistently and better in the country.  The local people start to use the infrastructure more.  So there's that ecosystemic effect that is built in.

Other benefits is that you have better control of your infrastructure and more autonomy of your network with your own resources.  That way you can provision different technology in to maintain your network and across the other networks across that switching fabric.

We also want to make sure that those experts who are in the room, if you're hearing some of this and you want to amplify what we have to say, the Q & A is going to be very important.  And so feedback from all of you in the room.  So know that that's our goal is to get through some of this and then hear what you have to say.  Because we in no way believe that we've captured everything.  It's impossible, yea?  But this is a living document, as Wim has said, and there will be more that you can contribute here that we'll add in.  And in the future in the next couple weeks and I think even next year.  So this isn't it.

So I mentioned better control and autonomy of a network's resources.  And also more stability and robustness for the local Internet.  I mentioned that before.

Think of the cable cuts that you've seen, sorry, submarine cable cuts that you may have seen in some regions.  So a colleague of ours from Kenya has done a lot of work on Internet exchange work across Africa along with two other places that do training with partnership with other IXs in the region.  If you got a cable cut, you still can exchange traffic locally because the IX is running locally.  You also build robustness in that infrastructure among the different participants.  They won't offering 10 gig lines between mum bassy and Nairobi 10 years ago now you can because they have been able to build up the capacity in that country.  It's great, we've seen this in Ghana, as well.  It's amazing to watch that local connectivity grow and be more consistent from a quality perspective.

Another aspect of the benefits is the IXP helps support competition by supporting new entrants.  This is critical.  If you're a small service provider, if you're a new bank, you have a place to go to have consistent quality of service, good technical, better control of your infrastructure.  It's not just a redundant facility.  It can become your main place for traffic exchange.  And that competition is important because this is a bottom up process with the technical community working across different participants and stakeholders in that market.  But we have seen the competition that Internet Exchange Points enable from a very ground up neutral perspective but allows smaller participants to grow their companies, as well.

I'm going to turn it over to Malcolm for more. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  Thank you, Jane.  It all sounds great, doesn't it?  It's going to improve the network performance and reduce the latency.  It's going give you more control of your own resources and control over your destiny.  Security, great for resilience.  And it improves the competition in your environment.

Internet Exchange Points, they do everything but make you breakfast.

[Laughter]

And you kind of think there's a worry, maybe, that we're overselling it.  That there is creating the idea that Internet Exchange Points have are some sort of magic wand, the Panacea that will solve all your problems and they're not.  They can't.  They can achieve a lot but they can't do everything and they can't do everything to every degree.  But there's a reason why we get so enthusiastic about this.  And I will pull out a specific point that Jane just mentioned that I'm going to ask you to think about these areas that Jane just pulled out in this context and that's positive feedback loops.  The virtual cycle.

The reason why we get so excited about this and the reason why this can achieve so much isn't because the Internet exchange suddenly just    some cases, yeah, it does literally, suddenly reduce cost in a really substantial way; but in many places, it doesn't happen quite like that.

But in each of these categories of benefit that Jane has just taken us through, there are positive feedback loops where doing some creates more.  So not only does the introduction of an Internet exchange create one often reduction dramatic in the cost of connectivity because you're reducing the need for very expensive international connectivity.  And by keeping local traffic local and not sending it abroad when you don't need to or sending it over long distances when you don't need to, you're avoiding needles costs.  Not only that, that's a one off saving.  But think about what that saving means.

When the cost for users goes down, the users can make more use of it.  And businesses and new enterprises, that would previously not have been affordable could not be set up then become viable.  And when they become available, that creates growth.  It creates growth in demand.  It creates growth in resources.  More people come in, use the resource and that creates more money coming into the networks.  That can then further invest in further development.  That further investment and further development, itself then goes on to drive costs down yet further.  And that creates the positive cycle of development and growth.

And so the Internet exchange's contribution there, yes, the initial thing of in some cases, not in all cases, but in some cases, an initial dramatic reduction of cost, that's only getting started.  That's setting us off on a positive developmental track.  And this hasn't just happened in costs.  It happens in each of the areas that we've identified.

So in latency, as well.  Yes, by keeping traffic local, you're having a one off improvement in that.  But when we say that further investments in the construction of new network capability, that new network capacity to further supply that new demand that has been unlocked by reducing those costs, then you get further performance benefits.

One area, one specific area which is quite common is that when there is comment that's located outside the local region or outside the country, and there were often big content providers that have large amount of content, whether they're major content providers, the Googles of this world, or people who run third party content network delivery experts or those sorts of things.

Now, if you have to go long network paths to reach that content, then there inevitably will be a cost for that.  But as the local market is developed, it becomes more viable for those even for international content to bring cash in and to bring facilities within the region.  And so that, then, further creates that positive feedback loop in latency.

Similarly, the resilience thing.  Why    how does an Internet exchange promote greater resilience and connectivity?  Because networks are more connected to each other.  They are not just going into each other, but there is a more intermeshed network, or the more networks that spring up and that choose to interconnect with each other, the more that is true.  And then when each of these things creates the demand for more businesses and new networks to arise.  Networks that wouldn't have been economically viable under the previous example, under the previous situation they then contribute yet further to greater interconnectedness and greater intermeshness.  And that further supports the resilient side.

And again in competition, of course.  Maybe it's getting outside the purely technical, but quite frankly, when you create a lively and vibrant local economy of people that are building new stuff because this is now possible, a constituency that can see the benefits of this and can promote that and supports the idea of a competitive regulatory environment, as well, and a pro competitive regulatory environment.  So these positive feedback loops, I would say, is why we get quite so excited about this.  Out of proportion to the extent to which we'll just build an Internet exchange would otherwise justify.

Back to you, Jane. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  I'll mention one other policy    that was my fault to the technicians    one other key aspect is that many regulators and policymakers are very interested in helping enable that policy environment to bring in more competition.  They will step back and some don't.  We'll get to that in the section.  But Bevil and Milton, also, we've seen the difference in working with governments who want to allow the technical community to do their work.  They want some input.  They also want to know this is working from a policy regulatory perspective and helpful.

So it does take some work to work with those governments, regulators, policymakers and others that you start to create, as Malcolm had just suggested, a stronger ecosystem and environment in the country where the regulator and the policy maker, they may jump in for a while and say how are things going?  Great.  The system, more peers are coming in, this is good.  If they start to see that investment, as well, in the infrastructure coming from outside the country, they start to also leave that whole system alone.  They still monitor it, per se, but they leave that environment and then they start to work on other parts of the ecosystem.

So we've seen this positive impact and effect.  Governments have been very helpful to that work.  I want to stress that.  Because some say "I'm the technical community, we can handle everything.  "I'm not saying the government can jump in and regulate.  But there's a role for everyone to work together and that's part of that partnership that we're talking about and building that ecosystem. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  If I could come in on that last point there.  The situation varies.  I was just going to say that the situation varies.  I think all of the points that we've made and then all are all true in all places but not to the same degree or in the same proportion in each place.  Jan exactly. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  The extent to which various of these different things will vary according to local conditions and the responses to that will also.  And including policy responses will also vary according to local conditions.

So, I mean, it may be, for example, that in some highly developed markets, the cost of the reduction of international transit prices is not really the major driving feature.  But on the other hand, in those markets where you often have a large number of economic operators, the ability to support a pro competitive environment is much more stressed as being a major advantage within that.  And that itself has a more indirect effect on the area of cost.  So each of these things, the situation will differ according to local circumstances and also how you go about what you need to address first both in terms of making an Internet exchange succeed and in terms of the benefits that it can do and what you would want to do next to make the best use of having a successful Internet exchange to achieve these benefits, as well.  Bark to you. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  I think what we'd like to do after that segment, turn to the room and take 5 to 7 minutes of the benefits you know of IXPs or from those participating remotely because we often forget to include colleagues who are participating remotely.  And that's a key facet, of course, using the infrastructure that we're hoping to build more of, the interwebs:  So, Michael is there anyone participating remotely that has something to offer with respect to this section?  The benefits of IXPs?  Is there anyone in the room?  Are there microphones?  Is there anyone who wants to add what we mentioned about the benefits of IXPs?  Okay.  Excellent.  Okay.

Well we're going to turn to the next section, which is the stakeholders.  And that would be Malcolm. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  Okay.  Well I'm going to lead off with this, then.

So the paper that we've got here is focused on creating an enabling environment for Internet Exchange Points is intended to be something that well you're starting from the position that we understand Internet Exchange Points, they're a good thing, not a bad thing, we'd like to have them, we'd like them to do well.  Now how do we go about that?  What does it look like to help that?  And how can we help Internet Exchange Points be created and then to develop and to thrive and prosper?

And within that we have various actions to do that, we will come to challenges and so forth in a moment, but the first bit we looked at is:  Who's interested?  Who has a role in this?  Who has a need for internet Exchange Points to do well?  And who has something to contribute to that.  And that's the purpose of the stakeholder section.

So we begin with something in a paper that might not necessarily seem so obvious is that that one stakeholder, in an enabling environment for Internet Exchange Points, is the Internet exchange point.  Seems a bit obvious, really, when you put it like that.  But when you think of it as a best practice session on Internet Exchange Points, they can get left off.  But actually one of the key stakeholders to look to when you are developing policy responses and so forth is the Internet Exchange Points itself and the operator and to see what their needs are in order to do that.

So we definitely want to list them in there.

And then we move on to well who gets the benefits?  Clearly most directly the benefits of an Internet exchange point an crew to those that participate in the Internet exchange point.

 

The networks, where they are access networks or content networks, that exchange information over the Internet exchange point.  So we identify them as one of the keys.  Because if the Internet Exchange Points is not able to meet their needs, then there's going to be a problem.  There is not going to an environment where the exchange point will be a success.

So you look at what    so one of the things you will end up looking at is:  What are the needs of a network operator that wishes to participate in an Internet exchange point?  How do we make sure that they are able to do so when they wish to do so?  And that will be a key element of analyzing how an enabling environment is created.  Then we look next to a broader category that we call government or regulator.

Now, the government or regulator has a range of interests in the success of an Internet exchange point.  One of the    broadly speaking the regulator, the governmental interest is the benefits that we've described.  The government's interest is what we would like to see these benefits push bounds and we would like to see that happen without anything bad happening.  So how do we go about doing that?  But the regulator may have specific or more specific requirements, in particular, also areas of emphasis that it would have., for example, the regulator may be particularly concerned about, say, resilience issues and to ensure that we are contributing towards a more resilient local environment and not a less resilient local environment.

Or it may be particularly interested in competition issues, to ensure that everybody was treated fairly, to ensure that there was the existence of the Internet exchange point was contributing to an environment in which network operators could indeed build their business and offer services and offer    support their customers in a way that was positive and wasn't contributing to something that was a problem or a bottleneck in that.

And so those kinds of interests, those kind of supervisory interests there.  Ultimately driven by ensuring that the benefits hoped for are indeed achieved.

Then there's under the technical inputs.  And here most particularly the building facilities operator.  The Internet exchange point may operate, it may own the building in some cases but in many, many cases it doesn't.  I would venture most commonly it does not.  Most commonly that building is operated by some third party.  And that building provides a variety of technical services exchange that without with which the Internet exchange will not be able to operate sufficiently.  It needs a reliable power supply, some environmental control.  This equipment gets hot.  It's going to have to have that have you need some form of security.  You can't have people wandering in the building and taking the equipment out that doesn't belong to them.  And as things really get hot, things catch fire.  So it's a really good idea to have fire suppressant.  I they are essentially core functions that need to be provided, need to be provided to a standard that you can rely upon.  And if you can, then you have the basis for being able to operate within that facility, a successful Internet exchange.  So on the technical side there is also a section between the interests of the network operator as somebody that uses and benefits from the exchange and also someone that contributes the technical service because of course you have to    and so that would also come then into that technical contribution category.

But as Jane mentioned very much in her opening statement, it's not just about the technical side by any means.  If you are going to have an Internet exchange that people are willing to participate in, that they choose to participate in and choose to interconnect their traffic, and so that you can actually gain, pass the traffic so that you're getting the benefits that we're describing, that has a big people element to that.

And so in there, there are a number of stakeholders that contribute to and contribute in really important ways to building the trust and personal confidence and business confidence that is needed to convince network operators that it is a good thing for them as well as for everyone else but not just for everyone else, but it is in their interest to participate in the Internet exchange.  And there already network operator groups in communities, there are developmental organizations, there are those that can provide both technical and    I don't really want to call it commercial expertise, but expertise on the commercial consequences and commercial value to demo this and why this is actually good thing to do.  Why is this in their interest to do?  A broader technical community can give specific technical advice.  And of course the Internet Exchange Points operate a community itself as a contributor to sharing essentially this kind of guidance and other forms of guidance.  This guidance that we have got here is mainly aimed at a broad audience, a wide range of stakeholders.  And there are a wide range of stakeholders that I just set out.  And the document that we have here is aimed at that broad audience to help a wide range of concerns.

For the Internet exchange point operators themselves, they will probably need additional detail, particularly on the technical side and so forth.  And that is one element to the things that is needed to support the enabling environment.  And there is a lot of support from the Internet exchange point operator in the community to other Internet exchange point operators.  And that is a key.  So we identify them as a stakeholder in that sense, as well. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  And just to add, as Malcolm was describing, there are different groups that are appearing at the IXP or can benefit.  And some of those which may not be as obvious, I had mentioned banks.  The bank in Malawi, the key bank in Malawi, they have a much better service because they can reach all their customers and others who are connecting in through the other networks and that's created, as we mentioned, the redundancy, the resiliency, the better traffic speeds.

Research and education networks and stakeholder group of course are students and people learning and future network operators and technical experts at the universities who either help with measurement studies.  We're actually working in Spain to bring in coders from Benin about we're working with four or five IXPs in Africa.  And also in Buenos Aires, San Andreas and the universities.  We're doing some work in Bolivia and Paraguay.  When I say we, we've worked with CGI, some of the local government, but as Malcolm was saying, the broad stakeholder expertise that's coming across here is not only the people that are running the facilities, managing the IX, whether it's the operator, the IX operator, it's the peering coordinators, we grow also peering coordinator experts across different companies.  And it's something that we were talking about this morning before Wim saw me.  We're thinking about how you would go    create an online course to work with those operators and peering coordinators to grow that layer.  And that may    and around the world you do find ISPs, large and small.  And some very sophisticated Internet Service Providers.  You'd be very surprised that some of those peering coordinators in some of those organizations don't have a lot of training.  They're asked to do peering coordination.  They are very smart people.  But if we start to help grow that community, as well, that's where that expertise is exchanged almost immediately when they find another person they can start to talk to online.  It's amazing.

And again I don't mean to oversell this.  It's not the magic thing.  Yes, it's part of that environment.

And one more element of some of those stakeholders.  County Code Top Level Domain operators.  If you're looking at improving your local DNS, as well, posting caches from some of the root, the local roots of the DNS.  And I mention universities and that's just a few.

And also if you host a time server, there's a different scientific community that can benefit from you hosting a time server for the country or the community in that area.

And the stakeholder community grows.  What we're talking about now is some of the developmental start and incremental change, what we call leveling up of the Internet exchange point.  It doesn't stay static.

And Malcolm had mentioned that there's this difference of the technical side of the house and the non technical, which is also    it's not marketing per se, but it's the people that can talk about the importance and the benefits of growing that infrastructure of humans and community and other, and the importance of growing the technical community.

I think there's a question remotely?  And I think we should try and take that so we don't forget. 

>> MICHAEL OGHIA:  Should I introduce myself?  I'm the remote moderator and I'm Internet Society ambassador.  This comes from the Kabul remote session in Afghanistan.  

"I think one of the major uses would be the uses of the IXPs in    given we are at approximate Internet crisis, what are the best practices of getting to initiate the process?  And who can help?"  

The question was provided by the National IT Professional Association of Afghanistan. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  They've come to the right place.  Technically speaking there are many people around this room and this table that can help them find who to talk to.  Part of that initial startup phase is talking to people who started the IXPs, the pre best practices phase.  Who is in your community?  As Malcolm had said, what are the local environmental factors?  Are you allowed to set up the IXP in external facilities separately?  Are operators allowed to bring in their own fiber to that switch point?  How hard is it to get equipment in?  One of my favorite topics.  Customs duties, taxes.  Those environmental factors, there are many checklists that many of us have that we could provide as an annex.  And I think we have a lot of good resources at the back annex of this document.  And as I said, many of us have checklists who's in the community, how do you work with them?  And quite frankly, it starts with building that human person to person discussion.

And you sit down with each other over tea or coffee or however you sit down and build a community in your region, and it really is the local champion sitting down well someone like Malcolm or me, Wim or Bevil or Milton in the room.  Adapting it to your own environment. 

We want to make sure this is very clear.  This is not a one stop solution to every country.  You have to listen to what people have to say about their local environments because they know that environment better than we do.  So you're going to know the local nuances and the local aspects where we may not know all of that.  That's where you start to build your own checklist and say okay, who do we talk to?  How do we do this?  Can the Internet Society help with equipment?  Can the IX federation, who has a huge reach into Internet Exchange Points.  In the report you'll see maps from Packet Clearinghouse, information from a really great survey that the IXF did, again the IX federation.  Over 400 IXPs exist.  Some are bottom up, some are commercial, some are quasi commercial, some are different membership based.  There are different solutions.  And some will fit your environment or you make your own solution.  And we're here to help you do that.

And again the regional Internet registries, who help you with the IP addresses    and Wim had been working on that community on the IPv6 as well.  They're there to also help with network training and talk to NIC.BR.  Do you have some engineers that can come?

Let me give you a specific example in a place called pap you an New Guinea.  A group called NRC.  The network resource centre and doing some separate and related work.  Or Montenegro might be a better example.  Let me why that.  Montenegro is a high mountainous country with undersea cables coming in.  They have a strong community.  The champion there is a university professor working with some local technical expert.  He learned about us through the International Telecommunication Union.  And so the ITU called us and said can we partner to talk about doing this?  We said of course.  So we set up a pre best practices discussion session with local people to understand the environment, what could be done.  And the local authorities and the universities said let's do it.  Let's work on this.  So it's the university driving the process.

So we were in a workshop in a high mountain village in the middle of no where.  In a town called Jeb electric in these mountains.  And the technical community meets there in Montenegro once a year in February.

 

We had about 3 meters of snow.  I'm not kidding.  It was fascinating.  But we brought together ICANN, Internet Society, three Internet Exchange Points from Europe, from the Czech Republic, from Ireland, from France.  And so they gave presentations about the different technical aspects of setting up the IXP, the equipment needed, the people and the man power.

And so after that, the professor from Montenegro sat down with me and others, Cisco representative was there.  Very neutral.  You come in neutrally even though we all represent different organizations.  Network connectivity and community and capacity building.  They sit down and said Jane, we know you can donate switches and gear.  Can you help?  Yes, let's talk about what we need.  We go back and forth with some other technical people and them and the different specifications and what they need from the IX and the gear.

So it's everything from sitting down and chatting and moving that discussion forward so there's progress.  And that is how with our colleagues in Afghanistan who are on the remote, thank you for that question.  There are different experts here and around the world who are willing to reach out to you.  And again as Malcolm said, we're not just the hippy happy bunch here, but we want to talk about we get excited about this because it's doable.  We're also working with Pakistan and other countries around the world who are in difficult geographical, right?  They have CFC and so does Afghanistan so they can connect to the sea cables.  But finding out who in your community is interested.  Quite frankly, if we had the equipment, we could set up the IX this afternoon, figure out how to bring in some other networks if we had the right people.  It's the human engineering.  If's 80 to 90 percent of this.

The technical side of the house and I want to recognize that really important person just walked into the room, too, who does great work in the region, Ariel from Kabasa, the Argentine IX.  It's about the human engineering.  Philip Smith is another expert with NFRC and Bill would say the same thing from Packet Clearinghouse, get together to talk about how to move forward.  Technical side is something that can be taught and worked on and grown from a capacity side.

Again are there any other questions, Michael? 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  One last little response to our remote question.  I think it's really great you asked the question because that's the first step.  And I suspect that you may not realise how important that first step is.  Because from our side of the table, we don't know your situation.  You are the experts in your situation.  Now, Jane has and her organisation has far    huge amount of expertise in getting Internet exchanges started from where there was none.  And I come from a community more those that are established and helping them to develop and prosper.  So we're in that sort of split between our areas of focus and areas of expertise here.

But let me be frank, I don't know the first thing about the situation in Kabul.  You know that.  So the purpose of a paper like what we've got here describes the factors for success, describes the kind of things that you're going to need to get towards.  But we don't know where your starting point is.  So you know that better than anyone else does.

So the importance of the local champion that can understand what the local situation is and then compare that to advice from outside and say that means we are missing this.  I don't know how I would achieve this thing that you say is important within our context.  And that, then, provokes the questions that can then build that partnership in providing advice on how to go about solve those problems.  But it needs to be driven from that way around because we can't just say well you need to do that and we need to do that and so forth because we don't know the local environment.  So the purpose of this kind of exercise that we're going through here is to provide a framework so that you can help yourself and so that we can support you and come and provide whatever assigns we are able to, whatever that's advice or anything else, when you apply that to your local environment.  But we can't apply that to your environment for you.  And for that reason, the local champion is the crucial step without which you've really got nothing. 

>> WIM DEGEZELLE:  I just wanted to add also for the remote question but I think at the back of the document you are producing there are two lists, two lists with basically nothing else than links.  One list is a reference to all kind of documents where you can find more technical details that, you know, a lot of organizations that have published checklists, Jane and Malcolm have been talking about.

The second list is based on also a list that is provided on the Internet Society website. 

A lot of organizations that have been mentioned on the table.  Where you can go for that little, that extra step, the little extra step, let's say that 80 percent more.  Anything you need to know, checklists, examples, organizations that can help you do the 80 percent, that's very important groundwork, maybe even that's work that starts now before you come to that 10 percent technical step.

So I really wanted to point out that that might be first step because I have heard a lot of names, this organisation can help you, that organisation can help you.  In the back of the document there are two lists just with links that we're bringing to the website and exact documents. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  There's a question up front.  Comment?  Looks like we're getting a microphone.  Yeah.  Michael, are there any remote questions?  Thank you.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA:  Remote moderator, Internet Society ambassador.  There is not a remote question but there has been some clarification.  What we didn't realise, Chip Sharp shared a link to the national Internet exchange of Afghanistan, of which the Kabul remote session then clarified that it is currently dormant.  And that's it. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  One thing we can point out is that sometimes IXPs do go dormant or there may be an environmental factor where rebooting the IX where I've seen in many countries.  Uganda is an important country.  Carl Spencer and other people did an excellent job bringing that online.  And to the colleagues in Afghanistan asking the question, A, it's excellent you're participating.  B, there are easy ways for us to try and connect you with others on that IX and with assistance in rebooting and restarting, if you will, that Internet exchange point. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  One of the questions I guess would be why it is dormant? 

>> JANE COFFIN:  Exactly. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  It may be there's some factor there that has proven to be a problem and that that needs to be addressed and we could look to see, well, this is how others have addressed this kind of problem.

It may be, especially with a small exchange, when they go dormant, sometimes that's just simply that it lost its champion.  There was nobody there that was still driving it.  And so it may just be nothing more than now that you have come forward with an interest that you would like to do that, that you're in a position to step into that and pick up where that left off.  I don't know the situation.  As I said, I don't know the first thing about the local situation.  But these are the sorts of questions that you're going to want to work through in that and compare that.

And the advice as to well this is what happened in other places helps you to sort of work through that in a way that might end up hopefully being constructive to the situation.  At the front. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  Gentleman at the front.

>> My name is Henrique Faulhaber, I'm one of the board members of CGIBR.  In fact, the IXP growing mutant group, growing the IXP in Brazil that's very successful.  In fact, I want to congratulate this group for the work done on this best practices Forum.  For the first year, I am really very happy with the result of this document to the community.  In fact, I would like to make a comment on this part of the    main stakeholders.  Because I believe this part of the work done is very important because Brazil, unfortunately, couldn't provide a key study of our project.  But I can feel that for each country, in fact for each IXP, each stakeholder group has different characteristics.  So in Brazil, just, for example, I would point that the government has almost no role in Brazil.  CGIBR is composed from government officials and also people elected from civil society.  In fact, inside CGI, you have the government, but the regulator itself has no holder up to the moment on Brazil's situation.  So it's specific on Brazil.  And I believe in each country has different roles for each stakeholder group.  And this kind of, this section could be used to map the    like a template to put a case study that we can compare country to country.  In fact, other point that I would like to say about Brazil that's the key bigger players on the field, I mean telecom that run 70 percent, 80 percent of the broadband in Brazil are not participating so much on IXP projects in Brazil.  But the IXP project in Brazil is very strong because it distributes the competition.  And we have IXP operation in 25 cities, São Paulo is a huge operation.  And in fact, this point of the known participation or little participation of the big players I believe is initial that can be addressed because you have a huge participation of CDNs and content providers in Brazil.  And I believe also in other countries.  But the point when the    sometimes conveyed against the IXP project would be a point to discuss in the future.

Just those two comments.  In fact, I believe it's a good ground to start with.  We are promoting together with ISOC also a workshop on the assistability models for IXPs.  That's an important you for Brazil and I believe other countries and I would like to invite everybody that's here interested in this field to participate on our workshop also.  Thank you. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  Thank you.  Can I just one, you provoked me to think of something when you were saying that about difficulties getting all networks that you would like to participate to participate.

I said a moment ago this wasn't a Panacea that wasn't going to be everything be wonderful in all respects and that in different areas you'll get differences to a degree.

One thing I would like to add to that that your comment provoked me to think of is it also doesn't necessarily happen at once.  Sometimes these things take time.  And particularly when you have large access networks with very significant market share.  And if you can still get a viable and successful IXP without them, they may stand back and not wish to participate at first, but that doesn't necessarily last forever.  If the IXP is a success nonetheless, and it can be a challenge to be a success without them, but if it's able to be a success nonetheless, it is by no means unheard of for those networks at some later stager to choose to participate or to a degree and gradually.

So, anyway, I just put that in because when you said that, I thought of that experience elsewhere and it reminded me that it's not just not everything is perfect but also everything can't be perfect immediately. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  And we thank you very much, that because we do have more time, bringing in different experiences, Brazil has a great experience and Argentina sitting right behind Brazil.  I think in Argentina you have 12 IXPs.  Brazil you have 25.  There's an amazing story here of the growth of the infrastructure and how it's worked with the people that have built it.

We can add in this data as Wim had said before.  And we can make sure that it's part of the going forward document because it's not closed.  So the good news is this best practices is not finished.  We're taking in information.  We'll add in the questions from our colleagues from Afghanistan, as well, because it's a good one.  And it's an important one for us to highlight.

I think there's another question in the room, yeah?

>> Hello, everybody, this is Zmarialai Wafa from Afghanistan.  I'm the head of PKI management authority.  Meantime, I'm the designer of Internet exchange in Afghanistan.  So maybe the question is where is the IXP?

I'm really delighted to hear from my fellow from remotely from Kabul.  It is really nice to hear.  I hope to hear more from them from other sessions, as well.  I just want to give you a little bit of history of Internet exchange in Afghanistan.  What happened and what is the current status.

As you know, Afghanistan is a landlocked country.  And we are surrounded by mountains and some really rough terrain that we have.  Currently we have 57 IXPs operating in Afghanistan.  And more than 75 percent of those IXPs, they use satellite technology to bring bandwidth to Afghanistan    it started from $5,000 per my megabit now through the fiberoptic project we are connected to other countries, it is to $60 we have brought down the price.

We designed the Internet exchange point in Afghanistan back in 2010, and we named it NIXA, National internet Exchange of Afghanistan.  We have reserve IP block for that.  We have the ASN.  Everything is in place.  We conducted three workshops to all the IXPs to participate and come join the NIXA.

One of the main challenges that we've    and we still have    is the connectivity model for all those satellite operators, how to bring them to the NIXA fabric.  We have some part of the NIXA fabric.  I mean at the moment, we have the capacity to connect at least five IXPs to the current fabric that we have.  But we would like to bring more.  But one of the challenges is the connectivity.

The second challenge is the local contents.  In markets, we don't have local contents in the country.  The only contents that we have is the local governmental websites that we have that we started like, okay, at least we will start hosting this and slowly, slowly motivate the private sector to bring more contents to this.

I would like to request if there is any support coming from your side in order to have a connectivity model specifically designed for the operators with satellite operators to bring them to the NIXA fabric.  That is my request from your side.  And if there is any questions, I'm available.  I'm at your service.  Thank you very much. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  Well can I first of all just say thank you so much for that contribution which was really fabulous.  I hope    I'd like to come back to you afterwards to incorporate some of those points.  I think there's some fabulous case study information there because I think we'd love to get.

If ever there was something that demonstrated far better than I could just how important it is to have people that actually know the situation on the ground, I just said I didn't know anything about it.  You have shown the value better than any words from me.  So thank you so much for that contribution.  Jane and there are some IXPs that are pulling down satellite feed and the connectivity have been worked on.  So we could provide you with examples that could be scaled in your country because you're going to have a much bigger network situation.

 

These are some small island developing states which are sea locked, so they have a different issue of connectivity.  Bevel's kind of an expert there.  And we're working with some in the Pacific.  And PCH and NFRC have, as well.  Actually those sea locked examples and some of the satellite cooperation is something we can help you with, and again scale to your country and to what's going on.  Because if you have 67 Internet Service Providers and content I should say, there's always this people say the chicken egg issue.  I'm not sure if that translates well for everyone.  But what do you do first?  We have a great economist who works on our team, Michael Kennedy who's here.  Ian my colleague Karen rose, have been doing some work with Rwanda on content development.

 

Rwanda is landlocked and not probably as extremely as you may be and your mountainous situation is also a factor.  However, there's lots of examples as well, in fact we have a report coming out next week or the week after with my colleague Rushting, who is the head of one team and Frederick dunk who is another lead.  Along with UNESCAP.  But the geographical regions of some areas, central Asia, the landlocked area of how we can work on it.

Are there other questions in the room on the stakeholder side?  Bevil Wooding from the Caribbean?  Bevil's with the Caribbean telecommunion and works closely with Packet Clearinghouse.

>> BEVIL WOODING:  Bevil Wooding, Packet Clearinghouse.  I just want to make a comment on what you were calling the pre best practice issue of mobilizing the local community.  I actually think that's a critical first best practice.  Because I have been directly involved in the majority of the 11 active exchange points in the Caribbean and I'm currently working on five others that are close to being launched.  And in each case, that issue of defining first who are the people in the neighborhood, as it were, those stakeholders who can play a part not just in the technical discussion but the nontechnical aspect of it, understanding the policy, nature of the environment, understanding who are the content creators, who may be most able to immediately show the benefit of the exchange point.  All of those things at the start allow for the richest conversation around how quickly do we need to get this exchange point going?

And what we have seen in the examples in the Caribbean is that the quicker you move it away from a simple technical conversation as Jane said several times, this is more about human engineering than about technical engineering    the quick you can move it away from the very fundamental network of lower latency, faster speed, low cost, so on, the more you move it to what are the benefits, the local environment, the quicker you see progress in actually getting the exchange set up.

Those conversations have to be guided.  And that's the issue of who leads the conversation?  Who is that local champion become very important to the success of the initiation of the exchange point.  But more than that, to the sustainability of the exchange point.

And we have had examples even in the last few years in the region where exchange points got underway because regulators said this was necessary.  Not necessarily commanding it through regulatory policy but pushing it strongly through threat or through other incentives that those exchanges didn't always carry.  But ones where there was a local champion, somebody who understood the technical, who was able to pull together different stakeholders, who was able to celebrate the immediate or short term successes, those are the ones that had the greater chance of carrying forward.

On the issue of local content, which is tied to that creation of a tangible example of the benefit of a local exchange, we have also seen where some of the content delivery networks that weren't very interested in the small markets of the region initially are now coming and developing actual packages because they recognize that content can be brought closer to local markets where there are exchange points.  Getting them on board was also a big part of boosting confidence locally.  Because if a large player like Akamai or cloud player or Google is interested in coming to country A or B, then surely we are on to something good here.  And that changes both the economics of the exchange point but also affects the optics of it.  And the optics is a big part of winning increasing levels of support.  We found out if you start right by getting the right people around the table, business, academia, and qualifiable data round what this thing is actually doing and is it actually providing real benefit to that, we joked earlier that all of these wonderful save the world benefits of the exchange points are actually true, if you can get those things quantified through objective research papers, then it helps in creating the trust that is needed both amongst the primary participants, the ISPs, Internet Service Providers, but also amongst larger local or international community. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  And thank you, Bevil.  And to amplify that and to segue into some of the environments that we've seen before.  I do want to highlight Bevil and I were speaking earlier, there is a Caribbean peering Forum June 6 to 8 in Curaçao next year.  There's also an African peering Forum.  There are different network operator groups where there's training being done from basic network operations to medium network operations, technicalities around the world.  And we're working with other colleagues to get some of that data online about the network operator groups.  But it's things called APRICOT in the Asia Pacific or the south Asia network group.  Caranog.  AFNOG in Africa.  There's ENOG in Russia, which has a vibrant community of experts, as well.

 

So when you have the network operator group meetings, the peering fora, no matter where they are, you have people coming to those meetings    and Latin American has a good one, as well, the lack nothing lack necrosis meetings and there's a pier Forum created long side of that    people are coming to those meetings from the content delivery community, from the IP community and business.  And government now.  We had a meeting in Mozambique, there were about 17 IXPs there in person, three or four remotely.  I think Bevil will see an increase over time, the community starts to grow and they'll start to attend these meetings and things don't remain static, as you also noted, Malcolm highlighted, content.  Is it local content?  Can you preserve local languages?  Are you creating local businesses?  Are you hosting sites in country versus outside?

And that's one thing that our colleague Michael is looking at from as Bevil said a data perspective, how many sites are hosted in Rwanda?  How many outside Rwanda?  How many can you bring back to be hosted locally?  Which then starts to, that ecosystem of data centre environments where you have professional data centers, security but capacity.  And you can host. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  Which goes back to my side about the positive cycle.  You're creating that demand.  Creating the infrastructure that supports more demand and is driving the cost down.  And that's how that works. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  Exactly.  So that's where the hard data does come in.  We are not just waving our hands to say how wonderful things.  There are ways to collect data.  We can point you to them.  There are projects where people are trying to collect data.  This is aggregated data.  It is not looking inside pockets.  I want to be very clear.  It's ASNs, prefixes, other information.  We encourage IGPs to professionalise themselves on the data collection side, website and also what were your traffic stats before the IX went in and where are they now?

 

Because it shows the growth.  But I do want to be careful with that statistic because traffic is not just a benchmark of success.  When you have content delivery networks coming in, they will load balance some of that traffic.  It's a term from a different type of infrastructure, but they will move traffic into different networks for redundancy, resiliency and quality of service, as well have.

And I should acknowledge Mr. Paul Wilson in the back of the room.  Paul is with APNIC.  He'll introduce himself.

>> PAUL WILSON:  Thanks very much, Jane.  I would like to thank you for the reference to APRICOT which is the major, major operators conference the Asia Pacific, APNIC hosts a second meeting each year, as well.  So there are two operational conferences which bring together the Internet community of the region.

And something that's been happening recently in those meetings is a new grouping called APIX.  So there's an app an Pacific Internet exchange point consortium.  It's at this stage an informal group of IXPs that come together and they meet twice a year to really look in a great deal of detail at the business that they do, the technology, the models and so forth.

 

So that's something which I think illustrates really well the fact that the community supports itself and is very interested in the community itself is always very interested in providing support and bringing more folks in to learn more and to do the job better.

So APIX is a fairly new thing but it's also mirrored on things like Euro IX and other IXP things that, IXP groupings that you may have heard from.

Like all of the RIRs, it covers quite a bit of informational content in our session.  And sometimes that also crosses into issues of interest to IXPs.  So just, for example, there was a presentation at our most recent conference on the thousand dollars IXP.  And so European expert from EUROC community came and took us through the process and details of how you start an IXP for $1,000.  I came into the session a bit late.  The economics may have already been discussed, but I think what often happens with IXPs is because we think they're critical bits of infrastructure, they must therefore cost an awful lot of money and involve a whole lot of complexity and bureaucracy, which is of course not the case at all.  I'll tweet a reference to that in case anybody is interested in that.  I thought I'd mention it for your info.  Thanks very much.  Congratulations on the session, too. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  Thank you.  We want to acknowledge the word that the Internet registries work and great policy experts that can help.  As the colleague from Afghanistan mentioned, you do need those.  The Internet registries you talk to about obtaining those resources.

We'd like to highlight that point Paul just made.  Some people, at one conference we attended, it's 300,000.  It's a million dollars.  We said what are you building?'s not that expensive.  Think of this in the startup phase.  Level 0 or level 1.  If you're getting donated equipment new    some equipment's used.  Links started with donated equipment and 5 ISPs.  Now they have over 500?  650 networks coming in.  So this isn't something again we said that just happens magically.  It's on a mush regional preparatory meetings that jumps up overnight.  Can take two or three years for that. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  Took us 20 years to get to 650.  But these things can take time.

I'd like to give a shoutout since we just mentioned APIX and also EURIX.  I'd also like to give a shoutout to LACIX, especially since we're in the region.  And we got aerial in the room.  I know AFIX, Africa, as well.  So the main regions, I covered themself.  But they are organizations of the operator community.  And so they are the people that have already got an Internet exchange up and running and who are there, joining organizations to talk to other people that are doing the same thing and to share information and share experiences and guidance.  And that's that.

So then it can be a routine if you don't have    if you don't have one and you're looking to get started, but there are others, as well, that probably have more expertise in the "I haven't got anything yet and I want to get started" and I really point, ISOC in particular and Packet Clearinghouse as being the two leaders in that area.

And then when you're established, or when you're parsing packets, then they will continue to provide a lot of help and support, I know.  But the Internet exchange point community can take you on, as I say, for 20 years.

[Laughter] 

>> JANE COFFIN:  One thing we should mention, so these magic meetings that happen, how do you get to them?  There are fellowships that are offered by many organizations to attend those meetings.  And that's how we've helped bring people to Euro IX, or as my colleague Raj Singh who runs the regional Office for the Internet Society, there are fellowships for the meetings at APRICOT and SANOG and others.  And of course the AfPIF, the peering Forum.  We'll have to talk to Bevil about fellowships.  And MENOG, the operators group, as well.  Stay tuned, there should be more going on with the Middle East with ripe IP doing great work and other colleagues help.  The Palestinian IX from both the Internet Society, Packet Clearinghouse and others.  So again that's technical expertise or just me cheerleading in the background for equipment.

Again, these are people that you can reach out to.  And sometimes someone will have a switch that they've used that they can say we'll give it to you as a interim measure.  Talk to ISOC or the IX federation or go to the network operator group and see if someone has equipment they can borrow or they can give you.  We just found someone who had new equipment that was loaning it to the IX until we can get our equipment delivered.

If there are any government official this is the room, I'm going to make a favorite pitch of mine.  I guess this is a good lead in.  We've got about 8 more minutes.  We are running out of time.  We want to make sure others can contribute.  And we have a question.  Okay. 

>> MICHAEL OGHIA:  Internet Society ambassador and remote moderator.  I have few comments personally but I also have a question, I'm sorry, a comment from chip, Chip Sharp on the remote page.

In terms of expense, the recurring expense of connectivity from the ISP's POP to the IXP can dominate.  The local, physical connectivity environment determines this cost.

Also, the caching of content locally can depend on the local laws on intermediary liability.  Jane how about we go over that connectivity question, too, and we can note that where you have high trust, real fiber costs and obviously high satellite connectivity costs, there's a different model you've got to work on trying to bring that down.  That's where talking to governments to help.  And this does lead into that environmental constraints and challenges aspect of the report we put together.  And there are clearly more.

But I know in South Africa and Nigeria, they're send being traffic through submarine cables from Johannesburg to Cape Town because it's cheaper because costs are high.  That's where people are working with the local regulators to say gosh, if the cost of connectivity is so high terrestrially, and the IX is helping locally, what can we do to help ameliorate this situation?  We would say these are looking at the challenges, quote, the barriers, and we want to put a more positive aspect on this.  Unleashing the Internet in your region.  How do you do that?  How do you identify those barriers and remove them?  Whether they're policy and regulatory, technical and infrastructure.  Is it the human side of the house which Bevil was very well describing and the community that you have to build and taking those challenges and flipping them and moving them into a more positive space, yeah, into an opportunity.

So, again, we've talked to others about is it submarine cable back hole from the    back hall from that serving cable landing station, you've already created a technical, much less economic choke point.

If I can't manage my traffic from the submarine cable landing station into the country, I'm going to be a little cranky, unhappy, because I want to manage my network.  It's not because I'm trying to do anything tricky.  But that's just a technical aspect, as well.  But if there's an environmental, that regulatory policy change, that's where you're not helping your country.

 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  It's a broader point here.  The Internet exchange as an issue.  It's not something that's a stand alone, completely discrete issue that doesn't touch upon any other area.

What we're talking about here is we're talking about building a part of the network.  We're talking about building some infrastructure that supports the network.  We're talking about something that actually helps solve or at least address some of the challenges that exist within the business of building networks.  But it's only part of that.  And that means that other things that are inhibitors or that are challenges for the broader area are not only going to be addressed by the Internet exchange point, but also some of those will apply to the Internet exchange point, as well.

When you mentioned, I can't resist, this is one of my specialist areas.  But the reliability thing.  Yeah, if you have regulatory provisions that make it very difficult for a network operator to operate because of liability concerns, for misuse of the network or for security provisions or whatever that may be, then that's always going to be something that acts as a dragon that investment, that makes it more difficult.

 

Now there may be more legitimate public policy issues why you want to do something in that area, but if you are doing something that will make it difficult for the network, that will make it harder, generally.  That will be harder for them to support joining an Internet exchange and so forth.

But depending upon how the law is written, it may be directly a problem for the Internet exchange, as well, because they may count as a network operator or not, depending upon how you frame the laws.

So, again, that these issues over broader relevance have an impact on this area.  So we can't completely isolate the topic of Internet Exchange Points from everything else.  It contributes but it's part of a bigger, more holistic venture. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  It's back to that ecosystem equation.

And one other thing we'd add as sort of an environmental constraint.  A lot of countries are looking at how to build    we know that the Internet is an economic driver.  We know it's important to connect more people.  That's the topic of the conference, right?  Connecting the next billion.

Or as my boss, who I think is in the room, would often say is also connecting that last billion.  Who are the people that are connected, the key people?  And what are we doing to work on that?  And as government officials and policymakers, if you've got policies that prohibit the easy import of equipment and you have high taxes and duties on that equipment, it's very hard to get that equipment in.

This is one of my favorite topics and it's not because anybody the room has brought it up, but it's something that we've watched where if we've sent three new switches to a new country and they sit in customs for six months, how is that building the Internet?  How is that building the local connectivity?  They sit.

And when I came back to this country and we had a conference there, some of my colleagues came up to me and said "you helped us get them out of jail."

And I said the switches?  They said they were in customs for six months.

So think of it also from that perspective.  This is what people talk about when they say what are the factors for building an enabling environment.  If we're going to connect more people and build that local connectivity, as Malcolm has said, what are we doing to help build it?  We're not suggesting security issues aren't important and that they shouldn't be a factor.  Or what you're looking at in your country or the submarine cable, security at the cable, but you are trying to also create more redundancy in the country.  And building that Internet exchange point is part of that factor and it's part of that ecosystem of building that up environment. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  Perhaps in the policy area it's partly about recognizing that there is a cost here.  Because these rules are not introduced blindly or without any justification.  They were there for a purpose.  But that purpose may or may not still exist.  It may not still justify it.

But when a rule is introduced, there's a consideration what is this trying to achieve?  And what is the cost of this?  Or the negative of this going to be?  And it's important to keep this under view because if this has an impact in this area, then the first step to seeing whether or not that could be adjusted or reformed, whether it's still needed at all, whether it's some other thing would be a better way of achieving that given changed circumstances, the first step to doing that is to recognize that this is having a cost.  This is actually standing in the way of what this is.  So whether it's equipment being held at customs or whether it's concern by people that they might be exposed to liability or to responsibility for what others have done, these are things will inhibit the investment in that further development and growth.  And sometimes these things    these rules are needed or some rules are needed to achieve purposes.  But it's important to understand the impact and to have it addressed as this is having this consequence.  Is there another way that we're seeking to do with this without this kind of consequence that nobody wants to achieve?

I'm dragging that assessment into that regulatory policy debate I think is an important part of this discussion about the value of Internet Exchange Points so that that can be properly assessed. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  Exactly.  We have about 30 seconds.  We are cognizant of the time and your time in specific.

Are there any other questions or points that people want to add?  We jumped quickly through the environmental constraints and challenges, but I think you have an idea of the picture.  There's more in the report.  But we would love to hear from many of you here or online.  And we appreciate the remote participation because it's critical to the success of the IGF and to local IGFs.  I think we should make a pitch for that, as well.  Local Internet Governance fora are important.  And if you can't bring all your team here, you can have a local meeting.  And that can either be focused on technical, as Malcolm was saying, the factors, other environmental factors, but there are many organizations around the world promoting those meetings, as well.

Michael, was there anyone else remotely?

>> MICHAEL OGHIA:  No. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  There is a hand.  Milton Kaoru Kashiwakura from NIC.br.  And we have run out of time.  I don't know if there's a meeting here immediately after, but we'll go for another five minutes and then if they throw us out, they throw us out.  Sorry.  It might be lunch break.  But we'll keep it contained.

>> MILTON KAORU KASHIWAKURA:  One suggestion.  Because when I started Internet exchange point in Brazil in 2004, we started with a number in Brazil was 177 AS in Brazil.  So now we have more than 3,600 ASN.  If you see the graph of the traffic in the Internet Exchange Points, we see the same growth that you have in the number of ASN in Brazil, I think it is important to have efforts to convince the IXP to be AS.  This is a point that I like to add.  Thank you. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  That's an excellent point.  We also want to highlight the workshop that the team at NIC.BR with CGI are putting on on Friday.  And I think it starts at 9:00 o'clock.  So Friday, 9:00 there's an IX session.  There's also one tomorrow with Canadian Internet registry and that starts at 11.  It's 11 to 12.  And those two workshops are going to explore more about the specifics of IXPs.  We talked to you about the environmental best practices.  And so just to put a finer point on this.  The report, you've got the information from Wim.  There are different factors involved obviously for the success, the best practices, the stakeholders, the environment, the impediments that you can help remove or work on and build your technical community.  I think that's one of the most critical factors, right?  We should just say you're building the local Internet, you're bidding the regional Internet, you're helping remove some of those barriers to connectivity.  Again, it's not easy.  It can take years.  It's just something that you have to start the conversation as Bevil.  And I saw Ariel nodding in the back and that's moving that discussion forward.  Michael, you have someone?

>> MICHAEL OGHIA:  I have two quick comments if that's okay personally.

So I just want to say although, Jane, you already said this is not a how to guide of how to create IXPs, I definitely would say that creating or including those mechanisms or resources that would help facilitate IXP development, making those very clear in the document if they're not already would definitely strengthen it.  But that was one comment I have for the document itself.

The other one I have to say is that really you all, including chip and Kyle and everyone else that's worked on this have done an absolutely phenomenal job in creating this document.  It's fantastic.  And I am not a technical person.  I had never heard of IXPs before August.  But now you've really explained it in layperson's terms and did a great job at illustrating why.  IXPs are advantageous, beneficial to multiple stakeholders and incredibly necessary.  So thank you. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  And that I think is also the great thing about an event like this, and again a thank you again to the local sponsors, because while it's an enormous effort by the government of Brazil with CGI and others, having a meeting like this brings people together that may not have had the opportunity to hear some of this and they get an idea and they start to move on the idea.  And anything that we can do to support those ideas and move forward the technical, the community, the capacity is part of what we do. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  Even if it's just putting together stakeholders from the same country on the other side of the world from here, then that's a major achievement, still. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  And it's an achievement.  It's small step.  Really, successes can be enormously important in small increments.  Doesn't happen overnight.  But each of your countries has a very strong technical base that can be grown.  And that's the key thing.  So one of the key things.  Well, we've said enough I think for today.  And you're probably hungry and we don't want to stand between you and lunch and/or coffee, which is my favorite food at this point.  So, Wim, do you have anything else you want to add?

>> WIM DEGEZELLE:  Well, the only point I would like to add, like I said in the beginning, the document is still open.  If you want to add comments, officially it's open until the end of this week.  Also, please keep    you have my contact.  If you want to come and put okay, I have a very interesting example in my country or something that really should go in the document, it's open.  But please do it quickly.  I mean the final version at the end of the month is published and hopefully it might wait till next year. 

>> MALCOLM HUTTY:  Just as we're wrapping up, as well.  Few word of thanks to the many contributors but I don't think we should close without saying how important this whole process has been to have Wim there corralling us all    Wim there corralling us all together, and getting us on those conference calls, we couldn't have done it without him.  So we owe him a great debt. 

>> JANE COFFIN:  Thank you for being here.  Every single person matters in this process.  Anything we can do to improve what we're doing is appreciated across our organizations and communities.  And I know from the technical community side, as well.  So thank you very much.  Help us make this document better.  Tell us what you think could be more useful.

The great examples today from colleagues in the room will be included.  And again thank you to Wim and company.  This was no small effort.  And it will continue in some way next year.  But let's try and make this a bit more useful in the next couple weeks.  And we look forward to any input that you all have.  So thank you very much.

[Applause.]

 

[End of meeting.]