It is no longer news that 95% of internet access in Nigeria is via the satellite mostly via huds that are locally in Europe and America and sometines in Asia. what this indirectly dictates is that Nigeria does not have an exchange of its own and therefore is routed via the exchange of the host countries where the satellite hubs are located. This comes with several disadvantages. it makes it difficult to evalute Nigeria's internet presence and it also leaves us at the mercy of the controls of this other countries. Our .ng domain is also hosted by foregin coutnries for so many years, i dont know if this has changed. The delay to the take off was initially blamed on Nitels inefficiency with sales and marketing of the Sat3 services. Now that the sate 3 is available, for how long are we still going to have to wait before we can begin to enjoy the benefits of owning our own internet exchange. Let us discuss this issue

Actually, the SAT-3 cable will not help us with building a local Internet exchange, because it only links African countries up with a port in Europe. Though it will speed up traffic between countries on the SAT-3 cable (such as Nigeria and South Africa).

A local Internet exchange is only useful when Internet traffic within Nigeria becomes significant. This is unlikely to happen anytime soon, because most Nigerian traffic goes to US-based companies offering free services (Like Yahoo, Google) and Nigerian company websites which are hosted at cheap rates in US-based data centers.

With power supply and Internet access being more expensive and unstable in Nigeria, web hosting in Nigeria wil remain uneconomical and hence very few people would do it. This would make any local Internet exchange useless.

What are the advantages of a local Internet exchange in Nigeria?

The SAT-3 is connected to the rest of the world at Portugal via Sesembra. A local internet exchange has a lot to offer Nigeria, it will spur our image internationally and bring us in the league of the rest of the world, South Africa already has multiple internet Exchanges.

Economically it will save us a lot of foreign exchange because then we will have less to do with the satellite. from my findings, africa alone spends as much as $400m on satellite bandwidth annually and i know Nigeria pays a big chunk of this.

Internet traffic will also be faster. Right as we speak, if a user in surulere want to chat wth a user in ikeja, the traffic first goes to USA or Europe before coming back, with a local internet exchange, the traffic will be routed via the local exchange. I know the NITEL's Netcom house has been slated as Nigerian internet exchange point.

My worry is the poor level of awareness and slow collaborative efforts being put in place to jump start the project. It will also help a great deal to curb the 419 menace because then, people can be more easily traced by their IP address and we ca achieve better customised controls. And by the way, who told you nairaland and www.enownow.com cannot become another yahoo.

The benefits are minimal and the costs of a local exchange (remember NEPA, corruption, and the hurdle of regulation) appear to be much more significant more than the gains. Your example of chatting betwen two Nigeria does not require a significant of bandwidth except you're teleconferencing or doing voice chatting.

In that case, you could use a PTO which charges a low rate of 10 naira per minute for bearing the costs that would otherwise be borne by the local Internet exchange handling voice-grade Internet traffic.

Let's not confuse the functions of the SAT-3 cable (providing a low-cost port for IP connectivity to the rest of the world) with that of a local Internet exchange (to increase efficiency and reduce cost of internet traffic originating and terminating within a particular region).

I am not convinced that a local exchange within Nigeria is important at this time. If local traffic was that important, we would have seen large ISPs like Linkserve, Starcomms & Multilinks implementing IP Peering arrangements on their own volition, because it would save them money. But they are not. And the task of getting every ISP to connect to such an exchange is quite challenging - lots of negotiation involved, lot's of equipment will have to be imported.

GLobacom is said to be involved in setting up a local fiber-optic network which can be used by large companies (like banks and oil companies) for their inter-branch communication. But as you can see this doesn't even require an exchange at all.

I'm not extremely sure that SAT-3 is available either..? Is that for businesses only..?

Access to SAT-3 is available from NITEL. However, it appears that government is trying to separate the management of the SAT-3 cable from NITEL in order to prevent the purchaser of 51% of NITEL from enjoying a monopoly over broadband Internet access in Nigeria.

ok...sorry to go a bit off topic....

so broadband is solely associated with SAT-3..? the companies that are offering dsl...means that they offer it in SAT-3...or via satelite..?

@tomcat If at all they are offering then its definitely via SAT-3. DSL can only be offer through a [b]A[/b]synchronous or mere [b]D[/b]igital [b]S[/b]ubscriber [b]L[/b]ine i.e digital phone line.

Seun:

Actually, the SAT-3 cable will not help us with building a local Internet exchange, because it only links African countries up with a port in Europe. Though it will speed up traffic between countries on the SAT-3 cable (such as Nigeria and South Africa).

A local Internet exchange is only useful when Internet traffic within Nigeria becomes significant. This is unlikely to happen anytime soon, because most Nigerian traffic goes to US-based companies offering free services (Like Yahoo, Google) and Nigerian company websites which are hosted at cheap rates in US-based data centers.

With power supply and Internet access being more expensive and unstable in Nigeria, web hosting in Nigeria wil remain uneconomical and hence very few people would do it. This would make any local Internet exchange useless.

What are the advantages of a local Internet exchange in Nigeria?

with the recent development i cam in here to reawaken this page. What say you all?

yes, this is very important, but this issue shall be solved by government.

http://www.nixp.net

The idea behind the Xchange is a good one. With the deployment of fibre optic networks by Telecos and the arrival of 2 new submarine cables (Main One & Glo), we need more interconnection between our various ISP's.

I am having some email issues in our business. My friend has suggested we consider ahosted Exchange email services, but I am not sure if it will help me! Any ideas?

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