North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Middle Eastern Exchange Points

  • From: Joe Abley
  • Date: Wed Feb 08 01:13:26 2006 
On 7-Feb-2006, at 20:50, Martin Hannigan wrote:
As Joe's pointed out, what's available in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and
Kuwait are governmental monopoly incumbent transit services, a la STIX, as
opposed to Internet exchanges where peering takes place. There are
several private colocation facilities which sell transit, but are not
IXes, in Dubai and Kuwait.
ISC has equipment out here. 192.228.85.0/24 is being announced out of emirates.net
can't be that bad. :-)
The F-root node in Dubai is facilitated by Emirates Telecom/Etisalat/ EMIX, as per <http://f.root-servers.org/>. At the time we installed there was no facility available for peering or other multi-point interconnect with operators in UAE. I am not aware that this has changed. Woody's comparison with the STIX is spot on, as far as I know.

In pragmatic terms, due to the local regulatory environment and in the absence of a neutral exchange point, obtaining transit from EMIX in Dubai is the best approximation to a comprehensive set of bilateral peering arrangements with local ISPs. However, it's not peering in a topological/routing policy sense. The fact that F-root's covering prefix doesn't propagate beyond the region is due to special handling of that prefix by our colleagues in AS 8966.

ISC's intention in Dubai, as in all regions, was to provide the best access possible to F-root within the immediate surrounding region. I believe we achieved that goal.


Joe