May 26th, 2010 | 
Author: The Kenya Internet Exchange Point (KIXP) is the facility which keeps Kenyan Internet traffic in Kenya. It allows Kenyan Internet Service Providers to easily exchange traffic within Kenya, without having to send those messages across multiple international hops to reach their destination while improving connectivity and services for their customers. KIXP is run and operated by the Telecommunication Service Providers Association of Kenya (TESPOK ), which is a professional, non-profit organization representing the interests of ISPs and other telecommunication service providers in Kenya.
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A few weeks ago, the Kenya Internet Exchange Point marked its sixth anniversary. This is truly a big success story of the Kenyan ICT landscape and also a big victory for TESPOK, the original telecommunication service providers association of Kenya.
Historically, all traffic was forced through international satellite links and these “uplinks” and “downlinks” carried all the traffic for all destinations. As ISPs were not “allowed” to connect between each other for the purposes of exchanging traffic, connectivity or communication between customers on two local ISPs travelled all the way to Europe via satellite and then came all the way back on another satellite to land at the other provider who could be a few kilometers away. This was a very inefficient way to communicate and particularly from a cost perspective it was expensive as international satellite connectivity cost at least 5 times more than local connectivity. It was a technically and financially inefficient system. Read the rest of this entry »