HAITIAN EXCHANGE POINT

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HAITIAN EXCHANGE POINT

• Objective Facilitate the Interconnection of all
  the local ISPs in Haiti
• Reynold Guerrier, MULTILINK, Chief Technical
  Officer
• President of GSIS, Computing and Statistics
  Support Group

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Objectives

• Providing technical Assistance in the
  implementation process of an Exchange Point in
  Haiti
• Promoting and improving the ICT sector in Haïti
• To make easier ICT services and application
  development, particularly in Education and Health
  sectors, etc

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HAITIAN ISPs Market

• The 1rst Haitian ISP start operations in 1994
• Today there are 8 operational ISPs
• But, the regulator CONATEL ( National Council of
  Telecommunications ), has issued 12 licenses

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Haitian ISP connectivity to Internet

• Haitian ISPs are all customers of regional ISPs
  mainly based in the United States
• Only TELECONET, a division of the public Telco
  company has is upstream provider in Canada
• Its mostly non redundant satellite link

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Haitian ISP connectivity to Internet
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Services

• Dial-up
• Wireless radio for SOHO (Small Office/Home
  Office)
• Limited coverage wireless system mainly in the
  metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince (the capital)
• Fractional E1 or T1/ Leased Lines for the bank
  sector to interconnect their branches to their
  central office
• Only a few of them have their services available
  in other cities

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Only Wireless POP
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Interconnection

• No interconnection between the ISPs
• Any communication between 2 different customers
  has to go twice the satellite path
• Important delay
• Bad quality of the connection

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Consequences

• Unable to support some applications like VoIP,
  Video Conference
• Expensive where and when available (about 1500 U
  installation fee and 400-800 U recurrent for 128
  Kbps)
• Other ordinary services like Web Mail Hosting
  cant be provided
• Web servers are hosted overseas particularly in
  the United States because of better prices and
  services reliability
• Less market for the ISPs and the local web
  developers
• Barriers and obstacle to the development of ICT

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Interconnection study

• In September 2002, RDDH (Haitian Network of
  Sustainable development) a UNDP project finances
  a Study on a possible way to interconnect Haitian
  ISPs
• GSIS (Computing and Statistics Support Group )
  realized this study
• Objectives
• providing a technical and administrative solution
  to the interconnection issue
• The Exchange Point should make easier traffic
  between local ISPs ( keep the local traffic
  local)

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Study results

• Technical solution
• Some management solutions
• Some incentive measures
• Exchange Point Hosting Boutiliers, a hill that
  surrounds the Metropolitan area of
  Port-au-Prince and where each ISP already has at
  least a Point of Presence

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The technical solution diagram
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The technical solution (continued)

• Local ISPs could be considered as an AS
  (Autonomous System) with only one connection to
  the Internet
• Each ISP will bring its own router running BGP4
  and will be in charge of the maintenance
• Implementation of dynamic routing required to be
  part of the XP
• The regulator will force all the ISPs to
  participate to the XP
• Traffic exchange will be done at Layer 3
• RDDH looked for fund to finance the installation
  of the XP
• Also for technical assistance in the
  implementation
• Administratively the XP will be managed by the
  consortium FDS (the State Faculty of Science) /
  RDDH
• A breakdown budget also exists for the
  implementation

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The most difficult part

• Convincing the local ISPs of the well being of
  an Exchange Point
• Their fear other ISP can use their network as
  transit by being interconnected
• My personal opinion their real is
• the recurrent charges they will have to support
  to maintain the XP
• Because they already have a lot of overhead by
  producing their own electricity, security and
  they are sharing a small market
• Commercial Power is only available up to 12 hours
  per day
• Security for every POP they have against
  vandalism

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New environment

• In December 2003 a new ISP MULTILINK started
  operations
• Marketing policy being the first Haitian carrier
  
• Wholesale bandwidth/International Leased
  Lines/Metropolitan Leased Lines
• Upstream provider TRICOM in DR via Micro wave
  bridge
• Installed Capacity OC-3 with Harrys Megastar
  radio/ but functioning on a DS3 capacity
• Good prices / much better quality than Satellite
  links

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New environment

• Being the upstream provider for all the local
  ISPs and realizing an XP de facto
• Willing to host the XP
• March 2005 HAINET another local ISP start buying
  bandwidth from CODETEL/VERIZON in DR
• Objective being a competitor for MULTILINK

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New barriers

• Not all of the ISPs agreed with Multilink
  proposal to host the XP ( particularly HAINET )
• Political instability
• Market reduction
• All local ISPs are MULTILINK or HAINET customers

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Possible solution now

• Peering agreement between HAINET and MULTILINK
• That will not protect enough the small ISPs
• An independent exchange point still remains an
  issue.

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Conflict

• Last November has been created the first
  secretary state for Telecom and Information
  Technology but only as a division the Public Work
  Ministry
• Role working with all the professionals and
  enterprises to create the National Council of the
  Information Technology which was supposed to be
  independent of the regulator and with the
  objectives of defining national vision and
  strategies for the Telecom and Information
  Technology
• But because of divergence of view with the
  titular of this ministry the post has been simply
  removed in the last government re-composition
• Now the professional association ATHIC is
  fighting to get it back

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MERCITHANK YOUGRACIASOBRIGADOreygue_at_multilin
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