Development of Osix - A Peering Point in a Box

Abstract

<p>Sending traffic over international communication links is much more expensive than sending traffic locally. Unfortunately, there are situations where two local networks end up using the international links because there are no national links between the two networks. To avoid this, a peering relationship should be established between these two local networks to allow them to directly exchange traffic. Peering relationships are implemented at Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). There has been a significant increase in the number of IXPs in developed countries but take up in developing countries has been slow despite these countries having the most to gain due to the high prices that they pay for international bandwidth. Research has identified that lack of technical skills is a key barrier to the deployment of IXPs in these countries. In particular, although skills exist to maintain an IXP there is a lack of technical expertise to integrate individual tools together to implement an IXP. The goal of this thesis is to develop an integrated IXP solution that could be easily deployed in developing countries. This content of this thesis includes analysis of the requirements for such a solution, development of a design, description of implementation trade-offs and evaluation of a final solution</p>