The NEED for more collaboration between service providers,
especially in infrastructure sharing, may have necessitated the recent joint
efforts by the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN) and the Nigeria
Internet Registration Association (NIRA) hosted a two-day.
Welcoming
participants, chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT), the Internet Exchange Point of
Nigeria (IXPN), DEACON CHIMA ONYEKWERE, represented by Chief Sam Adeleke said
that at the MUSON Centre venue in Onikan-Lagos, which theme focuses on
“Sustaining Local Internet, the Way Forward for Nigeria.”
This Forum, he
said, is an annual event being hosted by IXPN and NIRA collaboration with the
Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA). As you may be aware, both
organizations were established approximately eight years ago, but IXPN
commenced business officially seven years ago.
While the Internet
Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN) was initiated in 2005, it started business
officially in 2006 as a Limited by Guarantee (LtGe) entity; it embodies the
physical network infrastructure that allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs),
telecom companies, educational institutions and other Internet Protocol (IP)
centric organizations to exchange data traffic between their respective
networks.
So, IXPN existence facilitates networks to
interconnect through the exchange, providing the necessary environment to keep
local internet traffic local, stable and reliable with benefit to end-users
being reduction in costs, latency and increased speed to name a few.
Historically,
he said, IXPN was ignited after the participation of former president, Chief
Olusegun Obasanjo during the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) of
2005, precisely after visiting the United Kingdom eXchange Point, where he got
some insights on the benefits of the eXchange, especially to the citizenry by
way of reducing cost of internet traffic.
The role of the
former president to the founding of IXPN shows the extent political will can
change the face of a nation and we commend Obasanjo for this feat among others,
achieved during his tenure as president of this great nation, Nigeria.
On the other
hand, the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA), is a not-for-profit
organization charged with the management of the Nigeria country code Top Level
Domain (.ng ccTLD), which is best described as the nation’s identity on the
cyberspace and was founded on March 23, 2005.
He said, the
primary purpose of an Internet Exchange is to allow networks interconnect
directly, via the exchange, rather than through one or more third party
networks. Therefore, IXPN became the first and only neutral Internet eXchange
Point in Nigeria since 31 October, 2006.
The key purpose
of eXchange Point, therefore, is to allow networks to interconnect through the
exchange, which in effect benefits all the networks or operators through
reduction in costs, latency and bandwidth typically as well as decrease in
capital flight from hosting data abroad.
The chief
executive officer, IXPN, Mr. Mohammed Rudman, dwelling on ‘Internet Content
Ecosystem and Way forward for Nigeria,’ said that in moving forward, government
should come up with the right policies for right-of-way and issues of multiple
taxation. Maintaining there is need for intervention fund to bridge the gap in
in-country fiber to ensure uniform pricing across the country, “this would
dramatically increase the demand for Internet and eventually drop the cost.”
Rudman pointed
out that interconnected with IXPs across the six geopolitical zones, ensures
all IP-centric organizations are interconnected, hence the organization of
local Internet content awareness campaign across the country is very important.
He went on to
state that Colle and Roman in a recent study considered local content to
broadly mean “the processing and diffusion of information customized in any
suitable format to fit the needs of a specific community.” Emphasising that others prefer the notion of
relevance suggesting that local content is content that is socially,
culturally, economically, and politically relevant to a given society.
“There can
never be sustainable broadband access in Nigeria without IXPs and local
content,” Rudman declared, insisting that Nigeria must move from content
consumers to content creators through collaboration, even as he commended all
the supporting companies led by MTN Nigeria Communications.
Chief operating
officer, NIRA, Mr. Ope Odusan in his presentation said that dotNG is a reliable
platform for digital content distribution in Nigeria, adducing reasons why
Nigerians should register a dotNG domain name, asserting that it gives the
owner a unique identity on the internet, as it affords you a virtual global
presence round the clock.
He also said
that a dotNG name is a very good tool for branding for business users, secure
electronic communication, wealth creation for content producers, and
e-Commerce. Odusan urged Nigerians to see domain brokerage as a big business
for domain entrepreneurs, adding that there are investment opportunities in
domain cyber estate business development.
On content
monetization, Mr. Odusan said that the likes of Pay Per Click Revenue from
keyword domains could increase revenue flow for domain names like danci.ng,
monitori.ng to name a few. According to him, what makes dotNG name reliable, is
that it has 3R Registry design, which is of global standard with public WHOIS
server on port 43, public WHOIS web interface, EPP interface for the
registrars, Escrow backup with Cocca, stealth primary server, insisting that
dotNG is reliability and has redundancy.
In addition, he
said, NIRA has motorized Automatic Voltage Regulators (AVR) for each power
source, therefore, doubling the power source, dual Automatic Transfer Switch
(ATS) with multiple power packs in each equipment, which are remotely monitored
for power, with ability shutdown devices remotely as well as network monitoring and content producers.
“Content is
King,” he declared, adding that the main driver of the Internet growth is
content, which could come in form of applications like electronic mail (Email),
Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), Web, blog, Facebook, Video among others.
He, therefore
advised Nigerians and participants precisely to turn their content into cash
because cash is Queen.
“Turn your
content, new and old into cash by using the power of dotNG via digital Internet
content,” he said, adding that these could be optimised by emails with dotNG
domain name, blogs with dotNG domain name, mobile Apps, online radio
streaming among others.
Remmy Nweke
... Making SENSE of digital revolution!
No comments:
Post a Comment