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African States Aim To Improve Internet Interconnections
jfruh writes A rapidly growing percentage of Africans have access to the Internet — and yet most of the content they access, even things aimed specifically at an African audience, is hosted on servers elsewhere. The reason is a bewildering array of laws in different nations that make cross-border cooperation a headache, a marked contrast to places like Europe with uniform Internet regulations. At the Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum in Senegal, a wide variety of Internet actors from the continent are aiming to solve the problem.
Are you the same AC that posted similarly idiotic anti-American first post in previous story?
Aftrican internet has issues, mainly because they can't afford to run much fiber, nor to secure it against various threats.
"Lack of uniform regulations" is almost certainly not the issue.
Africa, unite!
Depends on your definition of "kill". Current killing methods, using physical means, results in breeding more terrorists. On the other hand, easy access to knowledge and first person shooters will kill terrorists by making sure they're not born in the first place. Knowledge has this effect on beliefs: it kills them and builds a nice wall of reason to resist them reviving in the 3rd day. When you no longer live (solely) for the afterlife, you usually aren't inclined to martyr yourself as easily.
Shouldn't they focus on human rights, eradicating corruption, poverty, disease, getting rid of the so called debt they `owe` to Europe and the west? Instead, they want to improve their internet connection.. They really have the wrong priorities set at the moment...
And I can add, southern Africa has a big problem and it is called Telkom. It also does not help that due to "empowering" policies, overt racism and rampant crime they managed to drive away most of the experience people on most technical and medical fields.
Ran across the "IXP Toolkit" program a little while ago, and they have quite a few examples of how IXPs can really help the local tech industry and improve service:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0pVDSY-RfIpRtGhj2Kw-Ew/videos
They interview the folks that run a bunch of IXPs: Kenya, Egypt, South Africa, Zambia, etc.
It can surprisingly (to me) bring about a lot of change by simply having a telco neutral exchange point.
most of the content they access ... is hosted on servers elsewhere
Since when did that matter on the Internet ?
The reason is a bewildering array of laws in different nations
Welcome to the World.
places like Europe with uniform Internet regulations
Tell us about these uniform regulations.
Depends on your definition of "kill". Current killing methods, using physical means, results in breeding more terrorists. On the other hand, easy access to knowledge and first person shooters will kill terrorists by making sure they're not born in the first place.
What a load of naive simplistic bullshit.
The US is disliked in some parts of the world because the US interferes with local
governments and because the US military-industrial complex employs violence to get what it
has decided it needs. This has been happening since the 1800s, and if you had studied a bit of
history you'd know how utterly absurd your notion that internet access will reduce what you call
"terrorism".
Let's take your childlike logic closer to home, within the US. There is good internet access in the
southeastern United States. Yet millions of the people who live in the southeastern U.S. persist
in believing in things which DO NOT EXIST, such as the god their flavor of religion claims exists.
People are going to be who and what they are regardless of available information. This is because
few people actually think, and many people operate on emotions rather than logic. You are a good
example of this.
I had a situation that appeared that a hacker had taken control of a VOIP system and ran up a full E1 worth of calls to Africa 24x7 for a weekend resulting in a $1.4 million dollar phone bill. The initial evidence showed that Sierra Leone was involved with toll sharing fraud but I looked deeper. I called a few of their embassies and found out they couldn't call home if they tried and the London embassy had some who had the job of trying to calling home all day. It turns out that someone else was playing the scam and taking the money. Sierra Leone was given millions every month for the scam but then it was taken way with fines leaving them with problems. Everyone I talked to was hesitant to talk to me until I explained that I didn't think they were the scammers. I ended up talking to Alpha (what a cool name) who was the head of their phone company and he provided just the extra details. I had a friend from The old school US telco get some of the guys who used to work in the dark room listen to the calls and they said the wobble in the busy wasn't right for modern automatic gear so calls there would be considered connected even if most people heard a busy signal. The end result was a US phone company shipped them a nice bit of kit to terminate some of their calls in a deterministic way.
Nope, i am that AC, fuck you shit nigger american hamburger.
The Internet kills terrorists. The terrorists do it for themselves. The Internet and sms services can kill a whole lot more, as the events in various African countries show.
most of the content they access ... is hosted on servers elsewhere
Since when did that matter on the Internet ?
It matters because trans-oceanic links are expensive to put traffic over. If most people access local news, local banks, local e-government, then having an IXP that connects ISPs so that national traffic doesn't have to go over international links: (a) reduces latency, (b) saves operating costs, (c) encourages local tech industries (co-lo, webdev, etc.), and (d) improves security since the IXP is less likely to be tapped than international fibre.
Serious, it has been shown multiple times to make a meaningful difference:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0pVDSY-RfIpRtGhj2Kw-Ew/videos