Bevil Wood­ing

The in­au­gur­al Caribbean Peer­ing and In­ter­con­nec­tion Con­nec­tion Fo­rum (CarPIF), held in Bar­ba­dos in April, qui­et­ly marked the open­ing of a new chap­ter in the de­vel­op­ment of the In­ter­net in the Caribbean.

Such gath­er­ings, called peer­ing fo­rums, are de­signed to bring to­geth­er se­nior de­ci­sion mak­ers from in­ter­net ser­vice providers, cloud providers, con­tent de­liv­ery net­works and oth­er re­lat­ed en­ti­ties in a neu­tral en­vi­ron­ment to dis­cuss the in­ter­con­nec­tion of their net­works. Peer­ing fo­rums are com­mon­place in oth­er re­gions, from Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca, to Africa and Latin Amer­i­ca.

Peer­ing mat­ters

Why are peer­ing fo­rums im­por­tant?Sim­ple: in­ter­con­nec­tion of the com­put­er net­works that com­prise the In­ter­net is de­pen­dent on hu­man net­work­ing to es­tab­lish those con­nec­tions.

The func­tion­al­i­ty we en­joy when we view a pho­to­graph, watch a video post­ed by some­one halfway around the world, or send an email to a friend in a dis­tant land is brought about by the de­ci­sion of net­work and cloud ser­vice providers to in­ter­con­nect their net­work. The qual­i­ty of the ser­vice we re­ceive from those providers is de­pen­dent, among oth­er things, on how far or near those in­ter­con­nec­tion points are from sender and the re­cip­i­ent.

This is why CarPIF was such a spe­cial and his­toric event. It was the first time such a fo­rum was or­gan­ised to specif­i­cal­ly en­cour­age greater in­ter­con­nec­tion among providers de­liv­er­ing In­ter­net con­tent and ser­vices to Caribbean con­sumers.

It was al­so the first time the eco­nom­ic un­der­pin­nings of the peer­ing arrange­ments that de­fine the In­ter­net, were dis­cussed in such a con­text, us­ing Caribbean da­ta and Caribbean ex­am­ples to a Caribbean au­di­ence.

Im­por­tant­ly, the event saw peer­ing co­or­di­na­tors from the Caribbean build­ing re­la­tion­ships di­rect­ly with their in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts from ma­jor In­ter­net com­pa­nies such as Google and Aka­mai.

Peer­ing fo­rums are a main way for ser­vicer providers to es­tab­lish the re­la­tion­ships and agree­ments that al­low them to get con­tent clos­er to fi­nal des­ti­na­tion. The ac­tu­al events may not have pub­lic ap­peal, how­ev­er, their out­comes can di­rect­ly in­flu­ence the qual­i­ty of in­ter­net ser­vices, and eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties in a re­gion.

IXP en­abled de­vel­op­ment

Peer­ing can be de­fined the ex­change of da­ta be­tween IP net­works on pri­mar­i­ly a set­tle­ment free ba­sis. Net­work providers such as Ca­ble and Wire­less, Sprint, Dig­i­cel and oth­ers own high-speed con­nec­tions that make up the In­ter­net. These providers trans­fer da­ta be­tween each oth­er at lo­ca­tions called "peer­ing" points or In­ter­net Ex­changes.

At these sites the net­works "meet" or in­ter­con­nec­tion with one an­oth­er over so called lay­er-two in­fra­struc­ture. These sys­tems are then glob­al­ly tied to­geth­er by con­nect­ing high-ca­pac­i­ty fiber op­tic lines owned by net­work ser­vice providers.

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of In­ter­net ex­change points in the Caribbean has cre­at­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty for con­tent providers to now de­liv­er their con­tent clos­er to Caribbean au­di­ences. In prac­ti­cal terms, this can trans­late in­to a tan­gi­ble im­prove­ment in the qual­i­ty of In­ter­net surf­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for users. YouTube videos, for ex­am­ple, can be down­load with lit­tle to no buffer­ing, be­cause in­ter­net servers can de­liv­er them from a lo­cal source, as op­posed to a far way in­ter­na­tion­al source.

"The ever-in­creas­ing amount of video and oth­er rich me­dia con­tent is plac­ing new de­mands on the In­ter­net. Peer­ing is now an es­sen­tial com­po­nent of most net­work strate­gies to im­prove their cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence and cost ef­fi­cien­cies," said Mar­tin Han­ni­gan, di­rec­tor, Net­works and Da­ta Cen­ter Ar­chi­tec­ture for Aka­mai Tech­nolo­gies, a ma­jor cloud com­put­ing ser­vices and con­tent de­liv­ery net­work (CDN) provider.

"This Caribbean peer­ing fo­rum was a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet our cus­tomers in the re­gion and es­tab­lish im­por­tant new con­nec­tions. We are ac­tive­ly ex­plor­ing op­tions for put our con­tent caches at the in­ter­net ex­change points that are be­ing built in the Caribbean."

In the past, when there were no in­ter­net ex­change points in the Caribbean, ser­vice providers like LIME and Colum­bus (FLOW) would have to pick up the con­tent all the way in Mi­a­mi, or else­where, to de­liv­er to lo­cal users.

With the im­ple­men­ta­tion of lo­cal IX­Ps in the Caribbean, ISPs can now all ben­e­fit by pick­ing up the con­tent users want to ac­cess much clos­er to home at con­tent caches stored at the IXP. And that's a good thing for Caribbean In­ter­net users.

First of many

The CarPIF event is or­gan­ised by the Caribbean Net­work Op­er­a­tors Group (CaribNOG); a vol­un­teer-based com­mu­ni­ty of Caribbean tech­nol­o­gy prac­ti­tion­ers. It at­tract­ed more than 40 tech­nol­o­gy ex­perts from ma­jor re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al In­ter­net com­pa­nies, tele­coms reg­u­la­tors and In­ter­net ex­change point op­er­a­tors to Bar­ba­dos. Or­gan­is­ers in­tend to make it an an­nu­al event and plans are al­ready afoot for a sec­ond, larg­er CarPIF event in Cu­ra­cao in 2016.

The meet­ing was sup­port­ed by two non-prof­it in­ter­net or­gan­i­sa­tions, Pack­et Clear­ing House (PCH) and the In­ter­net So­ci­ety (ISOC), along with the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union.

Its agen­da in­clud­ed ex­pert speak­ers from ma­jor in­ter­net or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing Google, Aka­mai, the Amer­i­can Reg­istry for In­ter­net Num­bers (ARIN) and the Latin Amer­i­can In­ter­net Reg­istry (LAC­NIC).

Mile­stone, not des­ti­na­tion

The fact that the re­gion's first peer­ing fo­rum has been so suc­cess­ful is tes­ta­ment to the in­creas­ing ma­tu­ri­ty of the Caribbean In­ter­net com­mu­ni­ty, and the in­creas­ing re­gard for that com­mu­ni­ty by in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers in the In­ter­net space.

There is cer­tain­ly cause to cel­e­brate the pos­i­tive strides the Caribbean has made in de­ploy­ing crit­i­cal In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture over the past few years. How­ev­er, there is still con­sid­er­able room for im­prove­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it re­lates to the re­li­a­bil­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy de­liv­ery of con­tent to Caribbean con­sumers. The CarPIF is a great mile­stone, but the jour­ney has on­ly just be­gun.

Bevil Wood­ing is chief knowl­edge of­fice at Con­gress WBN (C-WBN) an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor at Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, re­spon­si­ble for C-WBN's tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion and out­reach ini­tia­tives. Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing