Under the agreement, the two companies will promote peering and local interconnection, with a particular focus on Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) as a key part of the internet ecosystem.
“We are proud to be teaming up with NAPAfrica to combine our competence and experience in IXPs and peering,” said Nurani Nimpuno, CCO at Asteroid. “We believe that Africa holds great potential for Internet growth, but there are still real challenges to solve in terms of in-country interconnection. IXPs can play a key role in boosting that, and at Asteroid we want to work play a positive role in that development. NAPAfrica with their amazing reputation and experience is an obvious partner for us to work with.”
Both companies have said that promoting and building strong local communities is part of their role in educating and spreading knowledge of local interconnection, which aligns itself within their own personal missions.
“Asteroid has a solid team of reputable IXP experts. We are incredibly excited about their lean, efficient, and highly automated IXP model, and we think it’s a good fit in Africa,”added Michele McCann, head of interconnection and peering at NAPAfrica. “We are proud to be teaming up with Asteroid in promoting local interconnection and peering on the continent.”
Community building and sharing of best practices has proven to be fundamental in improving local peering and creating successful IXPs.
IXPs are uniquely positioned to accelerate the development of a region’s communication infrastructure, including national and international fibre cables, and local data centre development. As a result the presence of an IXP in a country can also be instrumental in developing the local Internet ecosystem. It can improve Internet users’ access speeds and reduce latency significantly, encouraging the development of local content and local services.
In June, G-Core Labs connected to Asteroid Internet Exchange Point (IXP) with 100Gbps Ethernet (100GE). The high-volume connection will enable large amounts of peering traffic to be handled at the Asteroid IXP and improve its quality of service.
