1​st​ JBIX Peering Forum kicked off on a high note in Kuala Lumpur

The event served as a platform to improve the know-how and awareness of network peering and interconnection among the players, which will contribute to the improvement of regional connectivity.

Kuala Lumpur, 5 th November 2019 – Open DC Sdn Bhd (owner of JBIX) held its first Johor Bahru Internet Exchange Peering Forum at Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur. Attended by 120 speakers and delegates from various countries’ and industries such as education, banking, financial services, OTT, regional service providers, cloud players and multinational corporation sectors, the forum was designed to educate the peering community on how to enhance the Internet performance via peering within the region.

Peering is defined as the exchange of data between IP networks on primarily a settlement free basis. Network providers can transfer data between each other at locations called “peering” points or Internet Exchanges. At the Internet Exchange Point, the networks meet through interconnection of their peering routers and exchange traffic with one another over so called layer-2 infrastructure.

Weng Yew Wong the Managing Director of Open DC Sdn Bhd and the Chief Peering Officer of JBIX says “We’re delighted to host the first ever JBIX Peering Forum as a part of our continuing efforts to enhance the Internet and telecom infrastructure and services in Malaysia and in the Asia Pacific region. As new demands are placed on the Internet by the increasing amount of content and other rich media, peering has become an essential element of most network strategies to improve customer experience while keeping costs in check.”

Keeping these basics in mind, the event featured an exciting line-up of educational sessions from industry experts. Featured presentations include: Tom Paseka from Cloudflare, presented on “Demystify Peering”, Arnold Nipper from DE-CIX, presented on “Introduction to PeeringDB”, Walt Wollny from Hurricane Electric presented on “Secure Your Peering, Make the Internet Safe”, Dheeraj Chaudhary from Akamai Technologies presented on “Akamai CDN, OTT, and Traffic Trend, Tan Tze Meng from MDEC presented on “Evolution of Internet Infrastructure”, Achie Atienza from Globe Telecom presented on “ Peering Perspectives: from a Tier 1 Carrier in Philippines”, Kevin Meynell from ISOC presented on “ Mutually Assured Norms for Routing Security” whilst Carl Williams and Dan Spataro from Linode presented on “Peering: As Local As Possible”.

“I’m elated to be in Kuala Lumpur and to be a part of the first JBIX Peering Forum hosted by Open DC,” said Walt Wollny Director of Interconnection Strategy, Hurricane Electric. “The forum highlights the importance of content providers and Internet service providers coming together to build mutual beneficial peering relationships in network-neutral sites to improve the customer experience while reducing costs, this is also in line with the growth of online and mobile content,” Walt ends.

A 40-minute forum session entitled “Is it time for Corporate IT to embrace Peering?” was moderated by Weng who also presented his notes on JBIX Updates.

“This Forum follows the successful formula of providing presentations on the latest trends and policies in peering, as well as a platform for participants to discuss direct peering relationships with each other,” Weng ends.

The event was sponsored by Juniper, Sangfor, Bridge Data Centres Malaysia, Peplink, MyTelehaus Data Centre Wholesaler, and Arista.

Currently JBIX has 46 companies peered including Globe Telecom, Google, Twitter, AWS and Yahoo! Other players are from industries such as IT solutions, education, service providers, and web hosting providers. A number of non-ISP-licensed companies have also peered with JBIX. Port charges are maintained at the lowest price and will be based on a cost recovery model to attract and benefit more users. Peering is an important tool that keeps traffic local by ensuring internet traffic is exchanged directly at the internet exchange (IX) instead of having to travel through multiple providers and long distances overseas.