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Re: Middle Eastern Exchange Points

  • From: Martin Hannigan
  • Date: Wed Feb 08 02:26:30 2006 
At 01:11 AM 2/8/2006, Joe Abley wrote:


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.
Guys, are you being semantic? I'm *agreeing with you and
Woody here. Just not re: Kuwait and Egypt. You keep saying EMIX
and you're confusing me. Peering or no? "IX" naturally insinuates
yes regardless of neutrality.




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.

That's what I was interested in, and found. I appreciate
the political explanation. I saw ASN 8966 and behind that ASN 5384
w/55 prefixes. 5384 looks like a choke point.




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.

What is the benchmark of speedy resolution vs. application i.e. how fast
do you resolve before it's irrelevant, if at all?



-M<







--
Martin Hannigan (c) 617-388-2663
Renesys Corporation (w) 617-395-8574
Member of Technical Staff Network Operations
[email protected]