Puerto Rico Internet Exchange

Thu Sep 13 21:32:46 UTC 2018

Mehmet,

In general an IX only makes sense when there are local resources to exchange. It doesn’t seem like PR has a lot of, if any, content providers of its own, so most consumer content is coming from offshore anyway. Given modern DWDM fiber, backhauling all that content shouldn’t be an issue. I recall that in mid-2015 PR landed the "most advanced undersea fiber-optic cable in the Caribbean and Central America”, uniting a total of seven countries and territories. The head end was at Telephonica’s data center. I remember in your Nanog talk ten years ago that you felt that peer-to-peer file sharing and VoIP were major bandwidth consumers, but I’ve never seen the actual statistics for that. But even if that’s the case, the small number of ISPs should be able to form and fund their own IX given a business need.

I’ve done work in the Dominican Republic, and they’re in a similar situation, with no real business interest in an IX.

You asked a pointed question: given its location, is an IX in PR necessary? I know you’re invested a ton of time and effort in making a PR exchange work, but I think you may already have the answer, given the low interest. That answer seems to be “no”.

Of course, if you can get some major content provider buy-n, that might make the business case more solid.

 -mel

On Sep 13, 2018, at 1:27 PM, Mehmet Akcin <mehmet at akcin.net<mailto:mehmet at akcin.net>> wrote:

It has been little over a year and we have been working on launching an internet exchange in puerto rico but of course hurricane and other things got in the way of achieving this.

We now have identified what we believe the right location (most of the isp’s have presence in this location) backbone/ip transit connectivity, local team to provide onsite support.

Having said that We have been engaged with several content delivery networks, OTTs but general feedback was that Puerto Rico was not on their radar for 2018 hence delayed launch. Now we are talking to same players about 2019 but general answer seemed like people were satisfied enough to serve Puerto Rico from Miami.

Perhaps we are talking to really big CDNs, OTTs and we should engage differently however the level of interest is very low and I really don’t want to “build and they will come” again ;-)

Bottom line is, if there was an IXP in Puerto Rico similar to ones in Florida, I am trying to understand who would actually deploy (just speak to your company only please) because most of my assumptions were proven wrong ;-)

I guess I want to ask two questions, given its location in caribbean, does Puerto Rico need an internet exchange point? Would you join it?(it will be a membership based IXP where members share cost)

Mehmet

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 4:27 AM Mehmet Akcin <mehmet at akcin.net<mailto:mehmet at akcin.net>> wrote:
Hey there!

... ok this time I am not going to call it PRIX ;) well name doesn't matter really. Nearly 13 years ago I have attempted to start Puerto rico Internet exchange in San Juan. I have lived there over 5 years and i just wanted to really watch videos faster. The project somewhat died when i moved to LA but now there are few interested party to start an internet exchange in Puerto rico. The jsland historically had one of the slowest broadband/internet services which seemed to have improved in recent years however as of 2017 there still is not an IX in Puerto rico.

We , 3-4 internet engineers (on island and remote) , want to look into relaunch of this IX and hopefully find a way to keep local traffic exchanged at high speeds and low cost. We need expertise, and people who want to help any way they can.

We are trying to make this IX a not-for-profit one and we are looking at opeeating models to adapt which has worked incredibly well like Seattle IX.

We are hoping the relaunch to happen sometime in 2018. Thanks in advance hope to share more info and traffic data sometime , soon. Watch this space!

Mehmet
--
Mehmet
+1-424-298-1903

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