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Here it is, I am about to go off on another mindless rant. This time about Internet peering. This is not about VoIP peering, however international Internet peering. Specific case in point, Mexico.
Recently I started evaluating ISPs in Mexico. I have looked at many aspects of Business and residential ISPs, however with a close eye on latency and peering.
What I have discovered should be considered an embarrassment for ANY country. In the case of Mexico There is very little (if any at all) internet peering in Mexico. What this means is that when Juan who uses Telecable (which appears to really uses Bestel) in Guadalajara pings Maria who uses Telmex infinitum, ALL traffic travels ALL THE WAY TO THE USA AND BACK AGAIN! This is a completely ridiculous situation.
Firstly, I do not believe Telmex, nor Bestel are internet Backbone providers in the USA. This means that each of them pays to get their traffic into the USA or from the USA.
Secondly, this represent money leaving Mexico to terminate traffic back to Mexico! Not only that but in the aforementioned case, both Bestel and Telmex are paying for US backbone access for traffic originating and terminating in Mexico!
Thirdly, BOTH of these providers might save a bundle on USA backbone access if they only peered with one to another.
Fourthly, VoIP is beginning to become far more common in Mexico with Major carriers jumping on the bandwagon. However, it is a whole different game in Mexico because of the distance involved to the backbone of the internet and (lack of Mexico) peering. With latency, comes a higher probability of jitter. These issues result in lower call quality for users, making VoIP less attractive, unless of course your broadband provider is your VoIP provider. In some cases, VoIP users may be better off connecting to USA based servers than Mexico based servers if their Mexico based VoIP provider and broadband Provider are not the same company.
I think it is time that countries like Mexico begin improving their own infrastructure in order to improve service to their customers. At the same time they may also keep more money in Mexico instead of paying it in the USA.
COFETEL has an interest in supporting Mexico based VoIP, and they have the power to regulate Internet in Mexico. So let me ask, can they not see the writing on the wall?
Pings From Zapopan
Ping from Telecable Zapopan (Suburb of Guadalajara) to Telmex DSL Guadalajara: Average = 106ms
Ping from Telecable Zapopan to Telmex DSL Zapopan, literally the next door neighbor!: Average = 96ms
Compare those above with a ping from Telecable Zapopan to Dallas TX US Average = 53ms
Next, we compare the pings from Dallas TX to two of the same IPs that we used before
From Dallas TX to Telecable Zapopan: Average = 49ms
From Dallas TX to Telmex Infinitum Guadalajara: Average = 68ms
As you can see from the examples above, the Internet has a long way to go in Mexico. Mexico should immediately instigate better peering, so that neighbors' traffic between them is not routing out of the country first! I suspect this will have to be done by force with a Mandate from COFETEL.
As always, I welcome any reader comments.
Jan 2, 2008
2008 the Year we Peer!
I am calling 2008 , the year we peer for a couple of reasons. I am not referring to the large VoIP providers, I am referring to the small and medium VoIP providers. I also believe that with the peering of the small to medium VoIP providers, the larger ones will follow suit to whatever peering the smaller providers use, as there is strength in numbers. I envision that small to medium providers do not want to pay a high start up cost, nor collocate facilities, which both seem to be the case with the existing peering offerings.
2008 will also be the year that more VoIP providers dry up and blow away. Why? Well the answer goes like this… If you do not peer you will be paying to terminate calls that you may otherwise terminate for free. Your competitors may be doing this already, and those not peering are left at a disadvantage. Also, there is just the standard attrition rate. VoIP is nor easy to make money in , but it can also be a low investment start up, that can support a family on. Of course it does not happen overnight, and it takes a lot of work. So while building that VoIP business you need to save every possible fraction of a penny. Remember the movie, “Office Space”? Those guys pilfered fractions of pennies off of accounts, and it all added up. Now compare that with a small VoIP company. If they could terminate just 2% of calls through peering with millions of minutes annually, that might make it worth a small monthly fee for peering. Not to mention that peering is the kind of thing that as more and more companies begin to do, it becomes more attractive for non–participants to get involved in, as every new peering partner adds their destinations to the pool. Some technologies are destined to fail once a certain saturation level is reached, however I believe the opposite is true with peering.
A small to medium VoIP provider can begin to make this happen now by doing the following.
1) Open their networks to receive anonymous inbound SIP/H.323/IAX traffic.
2) Take advantage of existing ENUM and/or DUNDI offerings.
3) Contact us to offer to peer with us. We are currently expanding our peering relationships and will soon offer all available peering available to us to our peering partners, thereby making it a complete traffic exchange for all peers. Our goal is to make transparent peering a reality, so that any peer is automatically a peer with all other peers on the network, but we are not quite there yet.
Of course appropriate action needs to be taken to ensure that you are only terminating calls that truly terminate on their network. It is safe and easy to allow both anonymous SIP inbounds and DUNDI if one uses Asterisk as a front end for your DIDs. I am sure there are other ways that are not yet imagined as well.
I think in the next year we will begin to see exciting new peering offerings emerge.
Make 2008 the Year we Peer!
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