At 01:11 AM 2/8/2006, Joe Abley wrote:
On 7-Feb-2006, at 20:50, Martin Hannigan wrote:
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.
ISC has equipment out here. 192.228.85.0/24 is being announced out of emirates.net can't be that bad. :-)
The F-root node in Dubai is facilitated by Emirates Telecom/Etisalat/ EMIX, as per <http://f.root-servers.org/>. At the time we installed there was no facility available for peering or other multi-point interconnect with operators in UAE. I am not aware that this has changed. Woody's comparison with the STIX is spot on, as far as I know.
Guys, are you being semantic? I'm *agreeing with you and Woody here. Just not re: Kuwait and Egypt. You keep saying EMIX and you're confusing me. Peering or no? "IX" naturally insinuates yes regardless of neutrality.
In pragmatic terms, due to the local regulatory environment and in the absence of a neutral exchange point, obtaining transit from EMIX in Dubai is the best approximation to a comprehensive set of bilateral peering arrangements with local ISPs. However, it's not peering in a topological/routing policy sense. The fact that F-root's covering prefix doesn't propagate beyond the region is due to special handling of that prefix by our colleagues in AS 8966.
That's what I was interested in, and found. I appreciate the political explanation. I saw ASN 8966 and behind that ASN 5384 w/55 prefixes. 5384 looks like a choke point.
ISC's intention in Dubai, as in all regions, was to provide the best access possible to F-root within the immediate surrounding region. I believe we achieved that goal.
What is the benchmark of speedy resolution vs. application i.e. how fast do you resolve before it's irrelevant, if at all? -M< -- Martin Hannigan (c) 617-388-2663 Renesys Corporation (w) 617-395-8574 Member of Technical Staff Network Operations hannigan@renesys.com