Middle Eastern Exchange Points

Wed Feb 8 04:50:13 UTC 2006

At 10:30 PM 2/7/2006, Bill Woodcock wrote:

[ SNIP ]

>Anyway, back to the conversation at hand:
>
>       On Tue, 7 Feb 2006, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
>     > Middle Eastern Exchange Points
>     > I know of a Cairo IXP, and possibly one in the UAE.  Is there one in
>     > Kuwait as yet?
>
>All the ISPs I've talked to in Egypt claim that the Cairo IX was a failed
>experiment and that they haven't heard anything about it in the last two
>years.  Which roughly corresponds with the last time I heard anyone
>talking about it in the present tense.  But I'll defer to Joe if he has
>other information.
>
>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.

Bill:

UAE

ISC has equipment out here. 192.228.85.0/24 is being announced out of 
emirates.net
can't be that bad. :-) they are downstream of a whole bunch of net and I see
what looks like an IX. (corrections welcome) UAE looks interesting 
network wise.
It's too bad they can't get it together as you noted.

I don't see it as bad as you...interconnecting in a government exchange is
still peering. It may not be exactly the same, but I've found in some
cases you can't be too picky if you can peer with even a few regionals.

KIX:

3 lg. upstreams, 4 regional isp down, interconnected to UAE IX

Cairo:

CRIX is dead in name, but MCIT is running some exchange space & refer to it
crix xor cix xor mcit possibly by simple legacy and they will talk to 
anyone about it.
Xceed is the incumbent, renamed IIRC.

The terminology and "sexy" colo's built to Telcordia standards and 
NEBS compliance
may not be out there, but they are peering, even if it isn't by our 
definitions.

Howard, contact info for each out of band.

-M<

Martin Hannigan                                (c) 617-388-2663
Renesys Corporation                            (w) 617-395-8574
Member of Technical Staff                      Network Operations
                                                hannigan at renesys.com  