On 18 August 2010 01:35, [ Brainiac ] <arebacollins@gmail.com> wrote:

something that hit the news unnoticed was the announcement that seacom in conjunction with TESPOK have launched another exchange in the coastal town of Mombasa.

I am in kilifi, and most of my traffic goes out, does this mean my packets will not be going through nairobi? i would be very happy if that were the case. someone explain how this works like you would to someone who is still doing comm 101.

A local internet exchange is only viable and worthwhile based on the number of service providers that connect to it. If your providers connects to the exchange but no other ISP is there, your traffic will never hit the exchange.

If your traffic always goes to Nairobi before going international etc, then it appears your provider doesnt aggregate their IP traffic in Mombasa, they are simply sending everything back to Nairobi and then letting the routers in Nairobi decide the path to take to their destination. It would also appear that the international circuits your provider has are layer 2 links mapped all the way to Nairobi.

The appropriate design your provider should employ in Mombasa is to setup a complete layer 3 PoP that has a link to the Mombasa exchange, another link directly to their international provider outside Kenya and their link to Nairobi. The link that serves you in Kilifi should also be connected to that layer 3 PoP. This way, when your packets arrive at that PoP, the routers will decide if they are destined for international, local exchange or Nairobi and forward them directly without going to Nairobi and then finding the best route to their destination.

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#TJ