Project title: “Building the Local Peering & Interconnections Community: A Workshop Series for Managers from IXP's Members within Cameroon”
Project Managing Team: -Project General Manager (CAMIX) -Project Event Manager (ISOC Cameroon Chapter) -Project Training Manager (cmNOG).
Project budget:
$15,081.00 US
9,404,354.76 XAF
Funding Organisation: Internet Society Foundation
Grant Programme: Sustainable Peering Infrastructure (SPI)
Project summary: As its activities and milestones express, this project is committed to organizing an event which features a two days workshop (Workshop Series); with the idea of bringing together each designated Manager of any Orgs, in Cameroon, that holds at least an ASN (representing a network operated in Cameroon). During these two days, the attendance would be exposed to various relevant topics regarding the Internet Resilience Index (IRI), the Peering Ecosystem, Economy of Peering and the perspectives it may offer for a more affordable CaMeroon DOmestic InterneT (cmDoIt). The participants would also have the opportunity to discuss and reach consensus on way forwards regarding an active engagement within the Local Peering Community (LPC) and direct their respective teams to implement. The project have the pretention of covering all financial charges needed to take them from their respective towns of residence to the venue and back to home afterwards for each participant.
Event Town: Kribi
Event Venue: an Hotel to be choose in Kribi
Event Date: fist/second week of April 2025
Target Audience: This project targets participants who are individuals to be designated from members of the top-management of an organisation (including: ISPs, Hosting Providers, Universities/cmREN, eGov, Regulator, Banks, Enterprises, etc.) which holds at least one ASN (Autonomous System Number) to autonomously carry its network operations in Cameroon. The expected attendance is constituted of 28 individuals, designated by 28 of the 32 resource members of AFRINIC, operating in Cameroon.
Number of IXP Associated: Two (02); where one is CAMIX (with 03 PoPs, 02 actives in 02 towns) and the other is Douala-IX (with 01 PoP, 01 active) operated by the cmNOG and ST DIGITAL and it's still open to the whole community.
Focus on community: During the Peering Road Show (PRS), organized from the 23th to 26th of July 2024, we confirmed the lack (or non-existence) of an active community for the local Peering Ecosystem. During Day#1 the participants came-out with some ideas, including a collaborative grant application through ISOC Foundation by their organizations. Three main organizations (CAMIX, cmNOG and ISOC Cameroon Chapter) were tasked to develop and submit a project which could help in Building a sustainable Local Peering & Interconnections Community.
Focus on multi-stakeholder engagements: This project, titled “Building the Local Peering & Interconnections Community: A Workshop Series for Managers from IXP's Members within Cameroon”, is a great bottom-up initiative which aims to cross another milestone along the path to an effective Peering and Interconnections community within Cameroon. This project, which has obtained the SPI (Sustainable Peering Infrastructure) Programme grant from ISOC Foundation (SPI Grant ID: G-202409-20336), will be managed transparently by three main organizations (CAMIX, cmNOG and ISOC Cameroon Chapter) within and with the CaMeroon DOmestic InterneT (cmDoIt) community.
Project sustainability: This project is an attempt in bringing together the managers of Orgs involved in the domestic Internet Operations. Given that capacity, they are also those who can easily influence the development of Local Peering activities; including the practicality of an active Local Peering Community. In such, our expectation is that; if they are exposed together to these critical knowledge and they become aware of the real value of Peering for the businesses they manage on a day-to-day basis; then, they may start to take informed decisions; such as supporting all Local Peering Initiatives (LPI), including funding future community gathering activities, and even a sort of annual retreat for managers, and for technical team representatives.