[ncc-regional-middle-east] Regional Peering

My first contribution to this mailing list:

John,

While I definitely agree with your assessment, there are issues in the
GCC that sadly make peering a dream we are all waiting for but are very
unlikely to realize any time soon. On one hand, the PTTs are all looking
to peer with each other, while at the same time are wary of each other.
The only two countries I know off that have appropriate direct peering
are the Emarites and Qatar. Even that is only something I heard and I am
not actually sure off. In any case, when a new player indicates interest
in a peering arrangement, the propose IP Transit. It's the mentality of:
We are big and you are small, why do you need peering? Just take IP
Transit from us. 

On the other hand, bandwidth to the US, once you hit a landing point, is
a lot cheaper than bandwidth controlled by monopolies in the GCC. There
are no IRUs currently between GCC countries and the first cable system
of its kind that will allow someone other than the monopolies to own
capacity is... Well, Falcon, but god knows when Falcon will be complete.
It's over a year late now. Additionally, in some countries, because FLAG
partnered with the PTTs there, they will not sell capacity directly to a
competitor of the PTT but will leave it up to the PTT to control. Their
argument, said in private, is that they can't anger their partners by
selling to a competitor of theirs. Publicly, their position is this: You
don't need the capacity. We are trying to help you. Don't take it. 

When you insist you do, you are ignored. 

As to the NAP issue, there are people working on building one and then
attempting to attract the business. I know Mr. Ahmad AlHujairi who I
believe is a member of this list is doing just that with Gulf Gateway
Internet. I wish them all the luck and success. I would like to see this
happen and I would like to see peering become a reality. Still, I think
they are a long way away from that kind of success.

In any case, so far, I feel that STC in Saudi is the most open to
negotiations and discussion. 



Regards,


Fahad.






-----Original Message-----
From: ncc-regional-middle-east-admin at ripe.net
[mailto:ncc-regional-middle-east-admin at ripe.net] On Behalf Of John Leong
Sent: 22 May 2006 11:58
To: Saleem Albalooshi; ncc-regional-middle-east at ripe.net
Subject: Re: [ncc-regional-middle-east] Regional Peering


Sorry for the late response.  Yes, it is totally inefficient (and
strange) 
to have traffic between the GCC countries to go through the US.

Not only will it add latency you are also unecessary using up some very 
expensive long haul bandwidth.  BTW:  On latency, while the longer round

trip propagation delay is clearly a factor, the real pain is additional 
router hops.  Routers are real nasty since besides queueing delay, they
are 
congestion points.  The impact of packet loss [on TCP] is orders of 
magnitude more than any propagation delay, since you will have to pay
the 
direct penality of time out [to discover you have lost a packet] as well
as 
suffer longer term side effect of having you transmission window
reduced.

In any event, you should peer with each other within the GCC.  From 
engineering point of view, NAP makes a lot of sense.  However,
practically, 
most of the ISPs do bi-lateral rather than multilateral peering at a
single 
location so the NAP's role is somewhat diminished.

Best regards,
John



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Saleem Albalooshi" <saleem at nic.ae>
To: <ncc-regional-middle-east at ripe.net>
Sent: Friday, May 12, 2006 2:26 AM
Subject: [ncc-regional-middle-east] Regional Peering


> Dear All,
> Kindly find below a writeup about the importance of establishing
peering 
> connectivity between the regional ISP's, please feel free to correct
or 
> comment on any technical or linguistic information in the writeup
below.
>
> Saleem Al-Balooshi
> UAEnic
>
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