Ger­ard Best

The Caribbean Re­gion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions In­fra­struc­ture Pro­gram (CAR­CIP) is to­day start­ing a se­ries of meet­ings to ad­dress In­ter­net traf­fic rout­ing in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the east­ern Caribbean.The meet­ings, which will con­tin­ue over four days in St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, will pro­mote a co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach to the es­tab­lish­ment of lo­cal In­ter­net Ex­change Points (IX­Ps) in those ter­ri­to­ries.

Al­so among the ex­pect­ed out­comes are the es­tab­lish­ment of an IXP im­ple­men­ta­tion frame­work, the for­ma­tion of a Lo­cal IXP Work­ing Group, and agree­ment on an IXP Gov­er­nance mod­el.In­ter­net Ser­vice Providers (ISPs), reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies, Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions, con­tent cre­ators, and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions that use the In­ter­net to de­liv­er or re­ceive lo­cal con­tent or da­ta ser­vices have been in­vit­ed to at­tend.

CAR­CIP and the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU) will be work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pack­et Clear­ing House (PCH), the world's lead­ing im­ple­menter of IX­Ps, to or­gan­ise the meet­ings."Es­tab­lish­ing a lo­cal IXP can bring many ben­e­fits to Caribbean cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing faster do­mes­tic In­ter­net traf­fic ex­change and a more re­silient lo­cal net­work," said PCH In­ter­net Spe­cial­ist Bevil Wood­ing.

"IX­Ps spur the cre­ation of lo­cal In­ter­net con­tent and ap­pli­ca­tions. That's why, across the world, IX­Ps are con­sid­ered a pre­req­ui­site for the de­vel­op­ment of a ro­bust do­mes­tic In­ter­net econ­o­my."Wood­ing and Stephen Lee are the two CAR­CIP rep­re­sen­ta­tives who will fa­cil­i­tate the ses­sions from Mon­day to Thurs­day."A lo­cal IXP is a crit­i­cal plat­form for pro­vid­ing do­mes­tic-�fo­cused, band­width-�in­tense ap­pli­ca­tions. We ex­pect that IXP pro­lif­er­a­tion will ex­pand the mar­ket for In­ter­net-�based prod­ucts and ser­vices," said Lee.