Ger­ard Best

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos–The first-ever Caribbean Peer­ing and In­ter­net Con­nec­tion Fo­rum (CarPIF) suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed with com­mit­ments from In­ter­net com­pa­nies Aka­mai Tech­nolo­gies and Google to pay clos­er at­ten­tion to the needs of Caribbean In­ter­net ser­vice providers and con­sumers.

More than forty re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy ex­perts met in Bar­ba­dos on May 27 to 28 to dis­cuss strate­gies for im­prov­ing the eco­nom­ics and tech­ni­cal ef­fi­cien­cy of In­ter­net con­tent de­liv­ery in the Caribbean.

The meet­ing, or­gan­ised by the Caribbean Net­work Op­er­a­tors Group (CaribNOG), ex­plored the state of Caribbean In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture, the im­pact of lo­cal In­ter­net ex­change point (IXP) de­ploy­ment in the re­gion, and prac­ti­cal steps for im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty and cost-ef­fec­tive­ness of In­ter­net ser­vice across the re­gion.

The gath­er­ing was sup­port­ed by two non-prof­it­In­ter­net or­gan­i­sa­tions, Pack­et Clear­ing House (PCH) and the In­ter­net So­ci­ety (Isoc), along with the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union.

Itat­tract­ed In­ter­net ser­vice providers, in­clud­ing Ca­ble & Wire­less and Colum­bus Net­works, as well as telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions reg­u­la­tors and IXP op­er­a­tors from across the Caribbean. In­ter­na­tion­al par­tic­i­pants in­clud­ed the Amer­i­can Reg­istry for In­ter­net Num­bers (Arin) and the In­ter­net Reg­istry for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (Lac­nic), search-en­gine gi­ant­Google, and Aka­mai, the world's largest con­tent de­liv­ery net­work provider.

"The suc­cess of the re­gion's first peer­ing fo­rum is tes­ta­ment to the in­creas­ing ma­tu­ri­ty of the Caribbean In­ter­net com­mu­ni­ty, and the in­creas­ing re­gard for that com­mu­ni­ty by in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers in the In­ter­net space," said Bevil Wood­ing, In­ter­net Strate­gist with PCH and a main or­gan­is­er of the event.

He said that while the re­gion re­cent­ly made "pos­i­tive strides" in es­tab­lish­ing crit­i­cal In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture, there was still "con­sid­er­able room for im­prov­ing the re­li­a­bil­i­ty and ef­fi­cient de­liv­ery of con­tent to Caribbean con­sumers."

Wood­ing, one of the co-founders of CaribNOG, is re­spon­si­ble for es­tab­lish­ing the peer­ing fo­rum, to­geth­er with Sh­er­non Os­epa, Re­gion­al Out­reach Man­ag­er for Isoc, an or­gan­i­sa­tion that en­cour­ages and sup­ports peer­ing fo­rums in oth­er parts of the world.

"Isoc was pleased to be able to work to­geth­er with the CaribNOG com­mu­ni­ty and Pack­et Clear­ing House to stage this first peer­ing fo­rum in the Caribbean," Os­epa said.

Ar­turo Servin, who works on con­tent de­liv­ery and peer­ing for­Latin Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean and the Iber­ian Penin­su­laat Google, shared on the mega­cor­po­ra­tion's ex­pe­ri­ence in bring­ing its con­tent clos­er to Caribbean cus­tomers. Google Inc. is the com­pa­ny be­hind pop­u­lar In­ter­net ser­vices such as YouTube andG­mail.

"Google wants to bring its con­tent as close as pos­si­ble to Caribbean au­di­ences," Servin said. "We are cur­rent­ly ex­plor­ing op­tions that will al­low us to bet­ter ser­vice In­ter­net ser­vice providers and IX­Ps in small mar­kets like those in the re­gion."

Google com­mit­ted at the meet­ing to sup­port In­ter­net ex­change points in the Caribbean, and used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet face to face with IX op­er­a­tors and reg­u­la­tors from across the re­gion.

"This was a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet our cus­tomers in the Caribbean and es­tab­lish new con­nec­tions," said Mar­tin Han­ni­gan, ?Di­rec­tor, Net­works and Da­ta Cen­ter Ar­chi­tec­ture at Aka­mai Tech­nolo­gies. "These types of gath­er­ings are com­mon­place in oth­er re­gions, so it's great to see the Caribbean es­tab­lish­ing CarPIF and putting things in place to make it pos­si­ble for con­sumers and busi­ness­es to have a bet­ter In­ter­net ex­pe­ri­ence. That im­proved cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence is the re­al point of peer­ing and it'swhat mat­ters most."

Or­gan­is­ers an­nounced plans for the sec­ond CarPIF event to be staged in Cu­ra­cao in June 2016.