IXPN, Medallion DC engage stakeholders on internet peering, interconnectivity

The duo of Internet exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), a membership-based organisation, that provides a platform where networks interconnect directly within Nigeria and Medallion Datacentres, West Africa’s most connected facilities, have engaged various stakeholders, mostly in the internet ecosystem, on internet peering and interconnectivity.

The internet giants, at a workshop in Abuja, last week and said the workshop and subsequent engagements was centred around the impact of Internet eXchange Point of Nigeria and Medallion Datacentres on the ICT industry and the benefits of peering and interconnection to prospective organisations.

Explaining what peering and interconnectivity between various stakeholders will bring to the industry, the Chief Executive Officer of IXPN, Mr Muhammed Rudman, noted that peering will enhance internet connections for citizens and organisations alike, which will help the economy to thrive.

“Peering and interconnectivity through internet exchanges address the challenges of traffic by ensuring the shortest possible route is used to reach a given destination.

“It keeps traffic as local as possible, which improves performance and enables faster connections between networks, facilitating high-speed data transfer, lower latency, increased bandwidth and improved fault tolerance,” he said at the gathering that attracted over 100 stakeholders, mostly network engineers and administrators.

Rudman also called for a concerted effort to host of content locally, stressing that doing so will provide additional revenue opportunities to local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and data centres, which in turn creates more jobs and serves as a driver for economic growth.

“Nigeria cannot continue to pay money to foreign hosting companies as it constitutes capital flight, puts more strain on Nigeria’s foreign earnings, slows the growth of local data centres and delays the development of new ones,” he said.

Warning that hosting data overseas has several implications on the economy, end users, Nigeria’s security, legal and businesses, Rudman argued that if the content is hosted locally in any of the data centres, it has a direct and indirect impact on the economy in terms of job creation and revenue for the government.

Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer of Medallion Datacentres, Mr Ikechukwu Nnamani, asserted that the strong growth of Africa’s digital economy will drive demand for more data centres on the continent. Thus, there is need to have more data centres to be able to accommodate the surge.

“While we call for local hosting of content and data, there is also the need to build more data centres to be able to accommodate the strong growth of Africa’s digital economy,” he said.

He said Medallion already boasts of a data centres, which is touted as the largest peering and connectivity hub in West Africa with over 70 carriers and ISPs present and accommodates 68 percent of Nigeria internet exchange’s traffic.

Nnamani said going by the strong growth of Africa’s digital economy, it is building another data centre with 232 racks, that has access to the initial data centres and providers via campus connects.

Meanwhile, to boost the capacity of its increasing members and reiterate its commitment towards improving the internet ecosystem in the country,  IXPN organised a free Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) training for network engineers and administrators that attended the workshop as well as peering benefits to prospective organisations.

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