AfPIF is the African Peering and Interconnection Forum and this year it is being held in Dakar, Senegal from 26 to 28 August, 2014.
The 5th African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AFPIF) will be held over a 3-day period in August in Dakar, Senegal to discuss the future of peering in an era where the cost of transit is declining.
The event will also seek to discuss regional interconnection dynamics and content issues that are critical components of transit deficits.
As a multi-stakeholder forum, AfPIF will seek to foster cross-border interconnection opportunities by ensuring that key players — infrastructure providers, Internet service providers (ISPs), Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), international financial institutions, and policy-makers and regulators are present at the event.
Personally, I’ll be attending to make new connections, learn more about peering in Africa, and most importantly to advance the ongoing BCOP work surrounding public peering exchanges. There is currently a NANOG-BCOP published document laying out the Best Current Operational Practices for Exchange Points but it needs to be updated and expanded. There are also several other documents on similar topics in existence today but some are getting older and some are not publicly available. Our current focus is to split the topic into two distinct areas, one targeting BCOPs for exchange points themselves and one targeting network operators who participate at exchange points. The goal is to create a definitive document, or set of documents, for each area and ensure that each lives in an open, accessible place where it can be referenced and updated in perpetuity. If you are interested in being involved in this effort, please feel free to drop me a line – if you’ll be at AfPIF all the better!
Beyond bringing exchange point experts together to document BCOPs, I am truly excited about the great agenda laid out for this year’s AfPIF! The IXP Futures panel session on the last morning concerning “The opportunities for IXPs to grow national and cross-border peering” promises to be a highlight among a litany of great sessions, don’t miss that one! Also, Jane Coffin will be introducing the IXP Toolkit that afternoon as well. If you don’t already know about the Toolkit, I suggest you take a look – it is a fantastic and growing resource for anyone involved with Internet eXchange Points.
I’ll be in Dakar for the entire event so please do seek me out while you’re there and let’s chat about BCOP, the IETF, or any of the Deploy360 topics!