A consortium of Malaysian ISPs including founding members TM, Jaring & AIMS with peering members Maxis, Time, Digi, Nasioncom, Heitech Padu, MyKris, Airzed, Extreme Broadband, VDSL, EBTech, Freenet, Bizsurf, Paneagle and CNX have come together to launch MyIX - The Malaysia Internet Exchange.
What is MyIX anyway? A summary…
MyIX is a natural extension of MIX, an Internet exchange shared by the country’s two largest ISPs, TM Net and Jaring, but not available to other Malaysian ISPs.
Source: The Star - MyIX promises faster broadband
Some history on the Malaysian Internet Exchange:
The plan to set up the Malaysian Internet Exchange was proposed three years ago but failed to take off when the main players, TM Net Sdn Bhd and Jaring, failed to work together.
Source: The Star - Malaysian Internet Exchange launch on 15 December 2006
What does this mean for the user?
“While Internet customers would not see a direct reduction in costs, they would see an improvement in their broadband experience when accessing local websites resulting from the greatly reduced latencies, according to him. The MyIX consortium is a nonprofit body run by a board of representatives from its member companies.”
Of course, this brings up the question - how many local websites do you visit anyway? Personally, I think improving international links is a better idea, but still, its a step forward that will save us money as a nation. It’s also good news for local IPTV and education.
“MyIX is a peering infrastructure that will lower local ISPs’ costs for routing local Internet traffic while improving performance, enhance the broadband experience for Malaysian Internet customers, make it more popular, and save the country some RM2.36bil in foreign exchange outflows over the next five years, Dr Lim said. It could also attract international content providers to host their content in Malaysia.”
“…routing domestic traffic through multiple international hops, via exchanges in Singapore and Hong Kong, and back to Malaysian users, is a process that costs the other Malaysian ISPs hundreds of millions of ringgit annually. It also results in latencies of 80 to 100 milliseconds. By comparison, with MyIX in operation, the edge routers of local ISPs are now no more than four milliseconds away from each other, Afzal said.”
MyIX is basically a three phase plan, spanning the whole of Malaysia and RM20 million in capital expenditure. Phase 1 (Technology Park Malaysia) - setting up centres. Phase 2 (Penang, Johor Bahru, Kuantan) is expected to run from Mid March to June 2007, and no particular timeline for Phase 3 - Sabah & Sarawak.
Which brings to mind the following questions, which I hope to find the answers to, and post them up as soon as I know…
- Why wasn’t this possible 3 years ago? Why couldn’t TM Net and Jaring work together?
- Again. How many local websites do you visit anyway? Aren’t the majority of quality, entertaining sites located overseas? Aren’t international links what we should focus on? Does the word “jaguh kampung” come to mind?
- Why are MyIX and MIX existing seperately? Why isn’t MIX available to ISPs outside of TMNet and Jaring?
- Why have I never heard of some of these ISPs? How many of them are actually active?
- And, how soon till internet users here see a reduction in costs?
Josh Lim
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