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RIPE69 coffee breaks are sponsored by @lonap

RIPE69 is in town this week – look me up

Am at RIPE69 all this week. Working hard on behalf of LONAP who are sponsoring the coffee breaks.

If you don’t already know, LONAP is a not for profit Internet eXchange Point (IXP) where members connect with each other to share their internet traffic, a process known as peering.

Peering is what makes your internet experience a good one. Good in terms of low cost. Peering is the cheapest way for an Internet Service Provider to connect to the internet because they have only to provide a single connection into a communal hub.

Good also in terms of user experience because peering effectively provides a direct connection between ISPs with far fewer router “hops” in between. In this way latency, or speed of connection is optimised.

Uhuh you say. Well a fast speed of connection is important for a number of reasons. It isn’t just about bandwidth which is a representation of how much data you can shovel down a given connection in a given amount of time. It’s also about how quickly that data packet gets to your laptop/tab/phone.

The model is similar to to that used in financial exchanges in the city. Dealers are desperate to get financial data as quickly as possible becasue improvements measured in terms of milliseconds can result in millions of pounds of profit (don’t ask me how exactly).

In the internet world there are statistics that support why a faster connection makes more money for websites. Amazon claim that a 100 milliseconds improvement in page access time results in a 1% revenue improvment. Yahoo increased traffic by 9% with a 400 milliseconds improvement and Google say that slowing down the search results page by 100 to 400 milliseconds has a measurable impact on the number of searches per user of -0.2% to -0.6%.

That’s why ISPs peer. LONAP, with around 150 members, is one of the worlds biggest IXPs, ranking in the top 20 out of 450 or more around the globe. LONAP are based in London which ranks as the most connected city in the world hosting the most AS numbers. An AS number is a number assigned to a network operator that allows it to host IP addresses. The explanations go on. I stop here.

LONAP, as I said, are sponsoring the coffee breaks. When you get  coffee the mugs have tearaway sections that tell you whether you have won a prize or not. We are giving away some terrific prizes including the one in the featured image of this post. If you want a LONAP branded phone charger get drinking coffee. You’ll need to search out someone wearing a LONAP shirt to get your prize.

If you are at RIPE69 look me up. Also check out more connectivity related posts here.

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

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