Peering at the Internet’s Frontier: A First Look at ISP Interconnectivity in Africa

Gupta, Arpit; Calder, Matt; Feamster, Nick; Chetty, Marshini; Calandro, Enrico; Katz-Bassett, Ethan

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-04918-2_20

Cited by 57 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…In regions such as Africa, h tends to be much smaller than g because local IXPs offer little opportunities to offload traffic, and transit is expensive [33]. Thus, our analytical model explains why remote peering is economically attractive for African networks.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

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Remote Peering

Castro

Cardona

Gorinsky

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the 10th ACM International on Conference on Emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies

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The trend toward more peering between networks is commonly conflated with the trend of Internet flattening, i.e., reduction in the number of intermediary organizations on Internet paths. Indeed, direct peering interconnections bypass layer-3 transit providers and make the Internet flatter. This paper studies an emerging phenomenon that separates the two trends: we present the first systematic study of remote peering, an interconnection where remote networks peer via a layer-2 provider. Our measurements reveal significant presence of remote peering at IXPs (Internet eXchange Points) worldwide. Based on ground truth traffic, we also show that remote peering has a substantial potential to offload transit traffic. Generalizing the empirical results, we analytically derive conditions for economic viability of remote peering versus transit and direct peering. Because remote-peering services are provided on layer 2, our results challenge the traditional reliance on layer-3 topologies in modeling the Internet economic structure. We also discuss broader implications of remote peering for reliability, security, accountability, and other aspects of Internet research.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…In developing markets such as Africa, remote peering becomes a cost-effective alternative for reaching well-connected areas in Europe and North America [33]. Since remote peering has a smaller connectivity scope than transit, adoption of remote peering necessitates new strategies for traffic distribution.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote Peering

Castro

Cardona

Gorinsky

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the 10th ACM International on Conference on Emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies

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“…They discovered more than 200K new peering links. In [12], a measurement study of an African IXP has also been conducted. This study demonstrated the traffic load, links, and peering relations of an IXP that is located in Africa.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A measurement study of internet exchange points (IXPs): history and future prediction

Masoud¹,

Jaradat²,

Jannoud³

2017

Turk J Elec Eng & Comp Sci

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Abstract:Internet exchange points (IXPs) emerged to remedy the deficiency of peering connections among autonomous systems (ASes). IXPs play an important role in reducing the cost of transit connections over the Internet. This work attempts to study the popularity of IXPs over the Internet. This work consists of two main parts. The first part is a measurement study of multihistorical snapshots of IXPs. These historical data have been harvested for different European IXPs with emphasis on Amsterdam (AMS-IX) IXP. In the second part, two nonlinear autoregressive exogenous (NARX) back-propagation neural network models (BPNN) have been implemented to predict the following: the future traffic volume that the AMS-IX IXP will transit and the number of participant networks that will use the AMX-IX IXP services. We utilized AMX-IX IXP collected data to implement these models. Our results show that ASes have understood the important roles that IXPs play on the Internet. Moreover, the traffic size that is carried by the IXPs is rapidly growing. Finally, our implemented NARX BPNN models show a considerable degree of fidelity, in which we obtained more than 99% in regression value with negligible error.

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“…A recent study closest to ours characterized the nature of interdomain Internet connectivity in Africa [19], specifically focused on JINX (in Johannesburg) and KIXP (in Nairobi), two major IXPs in Africa. The authors measured the presence of local ISPs at various African IXPs and which of them chose to interconnect at these exchanges.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Analysis of the Largest National Ecosystem of Public Internet eXchange Points: The Case of Brazil

Brito

Santos

Fontes

et al. 2016

JCIS

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Abstract-Internet eXchange Points (IXP) have become an increasing research target when aiming at understanding the complex and evolving Internet ecosystem. IXPs are shared infrastructures where Autonomous Systems (AS) implement peering agreements for their traffic exchange and thus represent an interesting microcosm of the Internet diversity and a strategic vantage point to deliver end-user services.In this article, we provide an in-depth analysis of the largest set of public IXPs in a single country, namely the case of Brazil. The Brazilian public peering ecosystem counts with over 25 IXPs maintained by an overarching project called IX.br following a non-profit business model that facilitates multilateral agreements. The nation-wide peering initiative provides an appealing environment for innovation and fostering IP connectivity market practices. Without IX.br, access providers are limited in terms of coverage, performance, cost, and dependence on transit providers. The open and incentive-rich IXP approach can be regarded as an interesting development that may inspire other development countries as well as more established regional markets. Based on BGP data from all looking glass servers in IX.br, we provide insights into the peering ecosystem per IXP and from a nation-wide perspective by inspecting properties of the connectivity graphs and the IPv4 and IPv6 prefix distribution. We propose peering affinity as a metric well-suited to measure the connectivity between different types of ASes and overall found lower peering density in IX.br when compared to more mature ecosystems, such as AMS-IX, DE-CIX, LINX, and MSK-IX. When dissecting AS-level graphs we also observe the formation of IXP-enabled k-clique communities. As a final contribution, we have shared our 16 GB dataset along all supporting code to allow for new research studies by the community.

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Peering at the Internet’s Frontier: A First Look at ISP Interconnectivity in Africa

Cited by 57 publications

References 5 publications

Remote Peering

Remote Peering

A measurement study of internet exchange points (IXPs): history and future prediction

An Analysis of the Largest National Ecosystem of Public Internet eXchange Points: The Case of Brazil

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