For a country to develop at a technological level, it needs to have the presence of the great players international, this implies not only having them physically in the country as service providers or as a company to market their services, but also a digital presence in terms of content access.
On 08/03/2021, the country ended up taking a significant new step towards the Internet ecosystem in Angola. For the first time in the history of the Angolan Internet, a content provider connected directly to a IXP (traffic exchange point) with its own ASN (autonomous system number).
We speak of Microsoft itself. Company with a global footprint and known for the vast software products among the most popular are the operating system lines Windows, OneDrive, OneNote The social network LinkedIn, Skype or Whatsapp e Skype for Business, the business communication solution Microsoft Teams, the line of office applications Office 365 and the browser Edge. Hardware products include Xbox video game consoles.
The interconnection of Microsoft happened on 08/03/2021 as details below:
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What difference will this new implementation make compared to the existing scenario?
Primarily it is important to understand the concept of Caches. Caching it is the process of temporary storage of copies of data (files, images, etc.) in a given location. It is a technique often used by operators in order to improve the end-user experience and reduce the burden generated by the number of queries for a given domain / page in a geographic region.
In other words: in an eventual consultation of the www.menosfios.com page hosted outside
of the country, an amount of information is loaded as a result (text, images, codes, etc.). In order to allow more effective and faster distribution, part of the content is stored on a local server within the operator's network. The next query made by another user part of the content will start to be loaded via the local server on which
previously stored the information resulting in a better user experience.
Highlighting, in Angola we currently have the following international CDN (s) caches
locally housed:
- Azion;
- Google;
- Akamai;
- Netflix?
- Facebook;
- Cloudflare;
Microsoft's entry represents the seventh presence of a CDN (content provider) hosted in Angola, but the first with different nuances.
The big differences between the models
Existing installations are mostly caches made between “operator X” & “provider
of content Y ”. Generally speaking caches do not serve as a storage source
“Native” part of the information by the content provider, but parts in which the
high query request leads to its storage.
In this model, the “operator” guarantees access to its customers and entities of interest
to curly content. The cost associated with the sustainability of the infrastructure essentially weighs on the operator. From a global point of view, the customers of these operators may not represent the vast majority of users in the country as a society.
New model / implementation:
- The new model gives full autonomy to exchange traffic between networks present in the
IXP (traffic exchange point); - Small and medium-sized companies inserted in the ICT (s) with their own autonomous system number and presence at IXP (Angonix) will have the possibility to access Microsoft's content after the establishment of FREE bilateral peering agreements, in terms of costs associated with the operator in the previous model they implied. The conversation becomes between the small company and Microsoft;
- Microsoft implementing with its own infrastructure has the possibility of “native” storage of information produced locally or even externally;
- Decreased latency in accessing content hosted by Microsoft in Angola is another well-known example, resulting in a better experience on the part of end-users. For example, Xbox lovers https://www.xbox.com/en-US/ will certainly have better times for playing games online and with less LAG (Lag is an English word that refers to delays that can be experience in the communication between the computer or console and the server hosting the games).
The great milestone and reason for the satisfaction of the local ICT community is limited to the fact that
that Microsoft will be able to “open” doors for other major content providers and
"players”In the market can follow this initiative.
Next approach: In the next article we will focus on measurements through some Internet providers in the country and try to measure the before and after so that we can clearly illustrate the benefits of this new installation.
