PTCL, TWA establish local Internet peering

[Tee Emm]

From http://pakobserver.net/200907/02/news/business01.asp

PTCL, TWA establish local Internet peering

Staff Reporter 

Islamabad—In a joint ceremony held at Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Headquarters, PTCL and Trans World Associates (TWA) have signed an agreement on establishment of local Internet peering for routing of domestic email and Internet traffic. It was decided that initially the link between two parties will be of Fast Ethernet providing a peering capacity of around 80 to 90 Mbps. 

This arrangement will bring cost efficiency vis-à-vis international IP bandwidth by restricting local internet traffic within the country. Besides that, it will also provide routing efficiency especially in accessing the locally hosted websites. Considering as a major step towards Information Communication Technologies (ICT) revolution, the arrangement will also have an indirect impact on proliferation of local internet content development in the country. 

In continuation to its role as an industry facilitator, PTA was mutually working with PTCL and TWA for establishment of Local Internet Exchange Point(s) in the country. In this regard a number of discussions and deliberations were carried out by PTA and necessary solutions for implementation of said peering arrangements were conversed. Chairman PTA, Dr. Mohammed Yaseen in his remarks appreciated the efforts of the ICT Directorate of PTA, PTCL and TWA for working on the project and said that this initiative would bring a remarkable effect on Internet industry of Pakistan. The Chairman also highlighted that the ICT Directorate at PTA has embarked on several other projects that would soon bring fruitful benefits and productive results for the consumers and the industry. PTCL and TWA valued PTA’s exertions and ensured their continuous corporation for the betterment of Internet industry. 

It may be noted that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) of Pakistan seek international Internet connectivity through PTCL and TWA. The domestic Internet traffic originated by ISPs of the country is being routed through international hops as currently no mutual peering points exist in Pakistan. The present routing scenario is resulting in unnecessary delay for the local internet traffic, burden on International Internet links and increase in average per bit delivery cost of ISPs. With this agreement, all such issues will be addressed and local internet traffic will be fastest.

[Inspirex]

While this step was long awaited, the start off capacity is very very minute!

80-90 mbps is VERY small!!

Im not an expert on this, but i believe peering capacities between ISPs should atleast be a certain percentage of the total bandwidth capacity leased from the external providers.

Also, i wanted to know if a centralized peering exchange is being set up? or will peering arrangements be made between ISPs bilaterally?

--
- Inspirex

[Ahmad, Shakeel]

I would say no other ISP has to worry about it now since there are
only two backbone providers and they have joined up (unless ISP use
IPLC - not sure if any ISP do that now a days). 80/90 Mbps may be less
but not bad for a start. It needs to monitored closely as there would
be certain performance issues if this capacity is overloaded.

It would be better if we can have statistics available for this pipe
along with looking glass and other tools which would be very helpful
for our engineers and would add transparency to thi service.

--
Sent from my mobile device

[Haris Shamsi]

This sort of connectivity was available b/w two transits (E3) however
it was being used mostly in case of outage.

PTA was pushing these two since long time and its really good to hear
that finally it has been announced as well.

This will encourage isps as well to have local peering within regions.

Thumbs up

[Aftab Siddiqui]

 

Very good initiative...

 

But does it caters all the requirement for an IXP ? with FE connectivity I seriously doubt that.

 

In my opinion it has just opened up the case for all ISPs to peer up...

Regards,

Aftab A. Siddiqui

[Mohammad Majeed]

I agree with inspirex. This is way too small. Infact the minimum
should have atleast 1gbps. Why assuming an ISP who just have dedicated
stm from twa or a local news paper is on pie or twa. Assume there is a
surge of very high traffic this peering will only do 100mbps that's
it.? Afterwards it will or can bs chkoed or back to square one.

For me still its hard to imagine that they use 100mbps port for
peering this is surprising for me. If some on runs a media stream
locally on twa and ptcl broadband user wanna watch 500 user as an
example. Then how that peering will work?

On 7/2/09, Inspirex <insp...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Tee Emm]

Peering is when two ISPs tie up circuits and clear mutual traffic free of cost - for mutual benefit - both parties stop paying a third party for traffic that they originate for each other. It is good but the goodness is limited to the two parties only. Generally, it would be very far fetched to argue that peering would help local content development. It would, however, help save money for the two operators though.

An IX is when a set up is constructed where ANYBODY can hook up and exchange local traffic essentially at near zero cost (transmission costs are always everyone's own headache to manage). An IX stands a far better chance to establish and promote the value of local contents. An IX also impacts the overall bandwidth market in terms of pricing and establishment of IX is generally resisted by the main players in fledging bandwidth markets like Pakistan as in short run, it falsely appears, that an IX would take revenue away from main players. However, in the longer run, the overall data market grows with one or more openly and neutrally operated IXs in place and everyone benefits.

PTCL and TWA peering is good but not enough. But in these times, anything positive needs to be seen on a projector screen so I am happy on this development. 

-T

--
Tariq Mustafa MSN:t...@hotmail.com | Follow me: http://friendfeed.com/abunet
Phone Num:http://tinyurl.com/tmcell| Twitter: http://twitter.com/tariqmustafa
>>>>If you think email is dead, lets facebook: http://tinyurl.com/tmonfb <<<<<

[Faisal Khan]

I fully agree with TM - having a FE peer is good enough than not having any.

[Arsalan Ahmed]

Agreed with TM.
As an initiative.......... thats a good news for overall market, atleast it would represent a case study for local traffic pattern. For ISPs point of view i dont see much of the change. IX would be the ultimate solution  for keeping local traffic local generate more local content.

Regards
Arsalan Ahmed

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Tee Emm <tariq....@gmail.com> wrote:

[Majid Farid]

Like TM said, Something is always better than nothing :)

Both the data provider can further enhance the capacity. In absence of
substantial local content P2P traffic might push this pipe to be
filled very quickly....

On the same note why don't they use PIE for this? or can PIE be used
for this in the first place?

/Majid

> >> On 7/2/09, Inspirex <inspi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > While this step was long awaited, the start off capacity is very very
> >> > minute!
> >> > 80-90 mbps is VERY small!!
>
> >> > Im not an expert on this, but i believe peering capacities between ISPs
> >> > should atleast be a certain percentage of the total bandwidth capacity
> >> > leased from the external providers.
>
> >> > Also, i wanted to know if a centralized peering exchange is being set
> >> up? or
> >> > will peering arrangements be made between ISPs bilaterally?
>

> >> > On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Tee Emm <tariq.must...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
>
> >> >> Fromhttp://pakobserver.net/200907/02/news/business01.asp

> > Tariq Mustafa MSN:t...@hotmail.com <MSN%3...@hotmail.com> | Follow me:
> >http://friendfeed.com/abunet
> > Phone Num:http://tinyurl.com/tmcell|<http://tinyurl.com/tmcell%7C>Twitter:

[Haris Shamsi]

PIE is nothing but PTCL ....

[Aftab Siddiqui]

IX or anything like that should be unbiased and should be based on
consortium, where as PIE is not and will never be like that. So PIE is
history now.

--
Regards,

Aftab A. Siddiqui

[Ahsan Javaid]

This peering was there for quite some while. just not made official,
a lot of testing was done by then. The only thing is It was a STM1 and
was not even a direct link at that time, used to go through
Worldcall.

> >> On 7/2/09, Inspirex <inspi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > While this step was long awaited, the start off capacity is very very
> >> > minute!
> >> > 80-90 mbps is VERY small!!
>
> >> > Im not an expert on this, but i believe peering capacities between ISPs
> >> > should atleast be a certain percentage of the total bandwidth capacity
> >> > leased from the external providers.
>
> >> > Also, i wanted to know if a centralized peering exchange is being set
> >> up? or
> >> > will peering arrangements be made between ISPs bilaterally?
>

> >> > On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Tee Emm <tariq.must...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
>
> >> >> Fromhttp://pakobserver.net/200907/02/news/business01.asp

> > Tariq Mustafa MSN:t...@hotmail.com <MSN%3...@hotmail.com> | Follow me:
> >http://friendfeed.com/abunet
> > Phone Num:http://tinyurl.com/tmcell|<http://tinyurl.com/tmcell%7C>Twitter:
> >http://twitter.com/tariqmustafa
> > >>>>If you think email is dead, lets facebook:http://tinyurl.com/tmonfb<<<<<- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -