THE establishment of the first Qatar Internet Exchange Point (QIXP) has opend a vast pathway for Internet users. Local IXPs allow fast data transfer with great exchange speed, thus saving a lot of time and in turn cost for businesses, government establishments and even home users.
With the opening of the QIXP, Qatar has taken its advancement in technology one notch up, matching the best in the world and offering a highly competitive edge to the country’s businesses. Inaugurating the QIXP, Minister of Transport and Communications H E Jassim bin Saif bin Ahmed Al Sulaiti said: “This project will contribute to further improve the country’s international network readiness rankings and to attract global content providers in addition to enabling the new generations for creativity in the digital content realm and building up the aspired digital future.
This will contribute to achieving Qatar National Vision 2030 goals by providing a world-class infrastructural and informatics backbone and a knowledge-based economy that contribute to diversifying the national economy.” An IXP acts as a physical location through which Internet infrastructure companies such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) connect with each other. These locations allow network providers to share transits outside their own network. A CDN with IXP presence has the advantage of optimising the path through which data flows within its network, cutting down on inefficient paths and avoiding tromboning, which means a carrier sending data to another network in a completely different city resulting in longer latency and affecting the performance.
Over the last two decades, there has been a major expansion in network interconnections, running parallel to the enormous expansion of the global Internet. This demands new data centre facilities and more IXPs to handle the huge magnitude of data in lightning speed. A country like Qatar, which has been making huge strides in the ICT sector for a large number of services offered by the government and private sectors, needs a thoroughly reliable and faster data exchange infrastructure.
For example, a fool-proof, faster and safe infrastructure is essential for the ubiquitous cashless transactions which almost everybody in the country make use of for their daily needs.
By launching the QIXP, Qatar is taking another huge leap in the ICT sector enabling more efficient digital transformation and attracting more investments. It will help in reducing operating cost, offer better user experience, resiliency on national networks in the face of Internet blackout. It will be instrumental in providing more safe, secure and reliable data transfer and will augment national security
