Internet Exchange Points in Africa

Africa’s Internet Exchange Points

Africa’s Internet Exchange Points score well on lowering latency and local download speed but did not contribute to lowering of end-user costs

So this means even if we have JINX and CINX, the price of local bandwidth won't come down to an acceptable range making international bandwidth the cheapest option still?

That's bull****. Especially the reason by the countries for "improved quality of service" as the "cost savings" to the customers.

The argument that INX's do not have a cost impact is flawed. It has a huge impact. Take away JINX (and now CINX) and you're left with a lot of traffic having to go out to come in. Using the precious SAT3 cable that's at capacity and can't handle more traffic (bull**** reason from Telkom)

I want to see Bloemfontein, Durban, PE and East London get their own INX

The cost impact of 1 might be insignificant, but bundle it up to several, I think it might be a good way forward to provide uncapped local traffic, both for those who host websites and those visiting them, which in turn will increase profits for local businesses and paving the way for local content sites to develop and serve the public.

All in all, most pricing models are speed based. So I can understand the argument of "How do we measure the cost per hosting client if their site won't be utilized all the time" which brings us to the per meg/gig pricing model.

But I believe with an abundance of INX's in this country it would drive down local access cost significantly enough to be able to provide a hosting solution and say, here, R5 per gig for over usage, 100 gig bandwidth package for local traffic as per our international counterparts.

Don't come to me spewing bull**** about "But we're in Africa, we're 3rd world". This is SOUTH Africa and we KICK ASS. We've been around longer than most of these 1st world countries have with their pricing and costs being way down. Why can't we?

I'd love to hear some replies about this, especially the cost impact it would have if we had a DINX/BINX/PINX/ELINX

Even in Zambia they have a IXP and that cuts down dramatically on already congested satellite links by routing local traffic to all the subscribers of the IXP

I don't think that it is fair to be making these kind of conclusions about the viability of African IXP when they are still in their infancy. Its kinda like looking at a 2 year old and saying he'll never amount to anything because he is not yet as tall as his father.

JINX is still in its early days IMO and is currently growing exponentially. The strangle hold that Telkom had on the market clearly had an effect on our local traffic. A few years back Telkom were charging more for national circuits between JHB and CT than they were for the international circuits from JHB (via CT) to London.

We are now seeing a trend in big CDNs putting down a presence in ZA and this will move the balance of power significantly and have a big impact on the amount of traffic that needs to go over international links.

There is still a big problem with 'local' content sitting on international servers. ISPs really need to get innovative about bringing South African content back onto South African servers. The cost of local links is still too high but with at least 5 national and dozens of metro fiber networks under construction that will hopefully change soon.

And in other news... CINX is now carrying traffic