Security of Telco Connectivity Is Key Focus
The MyIX-MyNOG Conference 2017 that was recently held in Kuala Lumpur was the first ever, jointly organised conference by Malaysia Internet Exchange (MyIX) and MyNOG.
The conference that saw close to 250 participants this year, and continued faithfully in its objective of being an industry-level sharing event that focuses on technological updates in the telecommunications sector. (This year’s joint conference saw a total of 16 sponsors – AIMS, IPServerOne, Juniper Networks, Maxis, APNIC, Coriant, DGB, TM, ICANN, Netflix, Facebook, Internet Society, MYKRIS, GTT, MYREN and Nevigate; and 14 presentations over a one-day period in Kuala Lumpur.)
Lim Chee Meng, Deputy Chairmain of MyIX congratulated MyNOG for successfully holding the event for the 6th time, “MyIX is honoured and happy to be in joint collaboration with MyNOG for the first time to organise this conference. We hope to continue this effort as it is synergistic for both MyNOG and MyIX members – who make up players and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the telecommunications sector.”
Paul Ooi, MyNOG committee member gave the welcome message, whereby he called for more submissions from local ISP engineers for future, upcoming events.
“Although the event is held in Malaysia, so far only about 20 percent of the submissions (for presentations) come from local telco/ ISP engineers. We see more interest from neighbouring countries such as Indonesia, Bangladesh and even Myanmar. So I would like to call on the bosses of local companies and to encourage and support their IT engineers to take part in future submission MyNOG conferences. Make Malaysian engineers great again!”
Greater Interest in Security
Ooi also shared this year, a standout is the heightened interests in the security aspect of telecommunications connectivity. “About 30 percent of the presentation is about IT security. However with the recent spike in cybersecurity threats all around the world, it is only natural that IT security takes the limelight in the discussions and sharing amongst technical crowds such as MyNOG and MyIX members.”
Some MyIX Update
Some of the key MyIX updates highlighted at the conference are as follows:
- The Entire Malaysian Market is now connected (as reported by Cloudflare in the TPIX Peering Forum 2017)
- MyIX is peered with almost all the top content networks (worldwide). International peers include Google, Facebook, Akamai, MSN, Biznet, Cloudflare, TATA, Hutchison, Tencent, Twitter, Swiftserve, SG GS, ViewQwest, Telstra, Telenor and Alibaba
- There are 77 different networks connected
- 135 physical connections
- Max traffic (as of September 2017) is 240 Gbps
- Supports bilateral peering arrangement and multi-lateral peering arrangement over Layer 2
- Supports both IPV4/ IPV6 dual stack
- MyIX port charges have reduced to the point of almost matching international charges (RM8,000 for 10Gbps and RM2,000 for 1Gbps – as of Q1 2017)
- The estimated savings (by eliminating the boomerang traffic effect) that MyIX facilitated from 2006-2016 for its peering members is over RM300 million
Meanwhile, a snapshot of Malaysia’s Internet scene was shared by Sanjaya, Deputy Director General of APNIC, showing that Malaysia has a 69 percent Internet penetration (of its 31 million people).
He said, “Also, there are about 6.6 million IPv4 and 545,000 IPv6 addresses recorded in in Malaysia,” adding that currently APNIC has about 14,000 independent network members, of which 56 percent hold IPv6 addresses.
It is worth noting that Malaysia is one of the most IPv6 connected nations in the region; which is partly attributed to strong collaboration between the country’s main telco regulator Malaysian Communications And Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and its licensee.
Sanjaya also echoes the growing IT security sentiment amongst Telco’s and ISP in the region, “While migration to IPv6 is a key APNIC focus, we are putting more effort to add IT security training for our members.”
