Project Documentation | DIXIUP - Douala-IX Infrastructure Upgrade Project to support the Interconnections & Peering Community within Cameroon

This project is firstly made-up of technically-based activities; where the managing project's team has only to (i) identify equipment to replace/upgrade, (ii) define appropriate characteristics for the needed equipment, (iii) select an equipment provider, (iv) order the needed equipment from the selected provider, (v) pay for the agreed price of the needed equipment, (vi) receive the ordered and already paid equipment, (vii) integrate the acquired equipment into the infrastructure, (viii) configure the integrated equipment, (ix) install & configure software packages which serve to deploy and deliver useful Public Interest Services (PIS), (x) test, (xi) inform the domestic community, (xii) add new potential peers to the upgraded Peering Fabric, (xiii) collect graphs & statistics, (xiv) write the DIXIUP project final report, (xv) write a blog article about the DIXIUP project implementation, (xvi) publish the written blog article about the DIXIUP project implementation, (xvi) submit the DIXIUP project final report, (xvii) close the DIXIUP project. Its implementation offered a practical mean to bringing together Orgs involved in the domestic Internet Operations; within Cameroon…with intent of raising awareness on the Local Peering culture; while thinking of bulding a sustainable Local Peering Community (LPC). The Cameroon Peering Road Show (CaPeeRoS) covered more these community emulation & immersion aspects…

• Project title: “Douala-IX Infrastructure Upgrade Project (DIXIUP) – to support the local Peering & Interconnections Community (PIC) within Cameroon”
• Project Managing Team: -Project General Manager (cmNOG) -Project Infrastructure Manager (ST Digital).
• Project budget:
  • $50,000.00 US
  • 30,117,815.00 XAF
• Funding Organisation: Internet Society Foundation
  • Grant Program: Sustainable Peering Infrastructure (SPI)
  • Grant ID: G-202307-12438
• Project Town: Douala
• Project Location (Facility): ST Digital Datacenter (hosts the Douala-IX IXP)
• Project Cycle Boundaries: one year
  • Project Starting Date: 08 january 2024
  • Project Ending Date: 07 january 2025
• Project Reporting: 02
  • Interim Report Deadline: 07 july 2025
  • Final Report Deadline: 07 february 2025
• Target Beneficiary: This project targets beneficiaries who are organisations (including: ISPs, Hosting Providers, Universities/cmREN, eGov, Regulator, Banks, Enterprises, etc.) which hold 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: One (01); which 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: Douala-IX is the first IXP built within the local NOG community; through basic discussions among all active volunteers present on the cmNOG's Telegram public room. ST Digital provided the infrastructure and needed equipment; where the cmNOG provided the technical knowledge needed to achieve an IXP alternative with the following characteristics: (i) Bottom-up Community-based management (administrative & technical); (ii) BCOPs (Best Current Operational Practices); (iii) FLOSS (Free/Libre OpenSource Software) tools; (iv) Openness (welcome to any ASN holder) & Neutrality; (v) support for Critical Infrastructures & Locally valuable services; and (vi) local traffic should not go out of the domestic boundaries. One other evidence of the high community consideration, with regards to the DIXIUP Project, is that of the Cameroon Peering Road Show (CaPeeRoS), 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. 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 ““Douala-IX Infrastructure Upgrade Project (DIXIUP)”, 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-202307-12438), shall be managed transparently by the two main organizations (cmNOG and ST DIGITAL) partenering on the project within and with the CaMeroon DOmestic InterneT (cmDoIt) community.
• Project sustainability: This project offers an opportunity to upgrade a critical infrastructure through a collaborative; in order to emulating a crowdfunding model of contribution to support future costs & challenges together with the involved domestic Internet Operations community participants and their respective Orgs. When the practicality of an active Local Peering Community (LPC) is no longer a concern; our expectation is that; organisations benefiting to the IXPs would 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 the costs of IXP operations…
• Project Objectives:
  • Main Objective: Upgrade the Douala-IX IXP infrastructure
  • Specific Objectives:
    
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    • SO#2: ?
      
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• Project Key Expected Results:
  • KER#1 – Output: ?
  • KER#2 – Outcome: ?
  • KER#3 – Impact: ?
• Project Key Performance Indicators:
  • KPI#1: ?
  • KPI#2: ?
  • KPI#3: ?
• Project summary:
  As its activities and milestones express, this project is committed to upgrading existing infrastructure of a very low-cost community-built (BCOP-oriented, open-neutral and free-peering) alternative within the CaMeroon DOmestic InterneT (cmDoIt) ecosystem.
  Douala-IX is the first neutral and open-access Internet exchange point in Central Africa, a community initiative managed by the technical community, through the cmNOG; in partnership with the neutral datacenter, ST DIGITAL, in which it is hosted.
  Given that, some of the organizations, targeted to connect on the Douala-IX exchange point, would need port capacities not yet available on the peering fabric; we need to be prepared, in order to afford that desirable transition.
  Our national ecosystem either lacks local contents, contents locally pertinent and locally hosted services or that content produced locally are not locally served.
  This project aims to gradually fill these gaps, by upgrading the actual equipment, informing and convincing the target network operators and end user organizations (holders of ASNs); in order to increase the peering culture and the local exchange of BGP Network Layer Reachability Information (NLRI) within the country.
  An event gathering activity is fully part of the project submitted to the ISOC Foundation team and funded through the SPI (Sustainable Peering Infrastructure) grant program. Even with prior notice that SPI grant program was exclusively funding physical equipment for critical infrastructure such as IXPs. This implies that the Team management of the DIXIUP project have to raise additional funds; in order to be able to effectively raise awareness on the need to see more Peering agreement and the corresponding BGP sessions, so that the Peering status of the country would get better ¹⁾.
  

This section describes the current state of the peering and interconnections ecosystem within the economy the project wish to serve. It gives the opportunity to Describe: (i) the local IXP(s), (ii) the technical communities, and/or (iii) the policy landscape in the DOmestic InterneT (DOit), alongside with (iv) opportunities and (v) challenges.

Within the Cameroonian's Internet ecosystem, we actually (july 2023) have two IXPs: Douala-IX (with four peers {04} connected, located in Douala) and CAMIX (with two PoPs, located in Yaoundé and Douala; where almost all the Network Operators are connected). The consolidated peak value of traffic, which flows across all these IXPs, is less than 100 Mb.

That situation is mostly due to misconfiguration that are actually worked around by CAMIX in collaboration with the cmNOG and others supporting *friends of IXP* (communities) from Orgs such as PCH and France-IX.

Our national ecosystem either lacks local contents, contents locally relevant and locally hosted services or that content produced locally are not locally served. But, each of these problems could be addressed separately; with an informed knowledge of existence of the others.

We also lack a real active community, in Cameroon, despite the continuing efforts of the cmNOG to gather all those interested in network engineering and ICT (Information and Communication Technology). Continually raising awareness on the need to come together while peering, building a strong technical community around the local Internet operations and collaborating in maintaining its security & resilience.

This section contains the specification of a solution which solve the problem identified et defined. It offers the opportunity to Describe: (i) how the SPI grant would be use to support the development of the local peering and interconnection ecosystem, (ii) how the necessary activities are planned, or (iii) the new/enhanced services which would be offered.

First of all, we started the Douala-IX IXP's project more than a year ahead of this submission date (july 2023), in order to attempt a try of something other than what was seemed to be a convincing poor state (demonstrating that anything we deserved was a clear status quo); established since the inception of our existing IXPs…

We founded the Douala-IX project under strong foundational building blocks (principles), such as: (i) Bottom-up Community-based management (administrative & technical); (ii) BCOPs (Best Current Operational Practices); (iii) FLOSS (Free/Libre OpenSource Software) tools; (iv) Openness (welcome to any ASN holder) & Neutrality; (v) support for Critical Infrastructures & Locally valuable services; and (vi) local traffic should not go out.

That said: it's simply a matter of consistency, for us to continue in trying to do, step by step, whatever is naturally contributing to carry us near and nearer to our foundational principles and guiding vision (“A local Internet exists here!”).

Through our planned activities, we would add new redundant equipment (switches and servers); in order to allow the deployment of new services {add DNS D root & K root anycast instances, install a BGP route collector, Complete the email services by providing mailboxes hosted internally for our own usage (in the first place), etc.} and the enhancement (redundancy and/or resilience) of existing ones {Authoritative DNS servers ²⁾, route-server, smtp relay ³⁾, ntp server ⁴⁾, project management web application –⁵⁾, RIPE ATLAS anchor 7050 ⁶⁾ , public conferencing system using jitsi ⁷⁾, DNS64 + NAT64 instance, monitoring platform ⁸⁾, IXP manager ⁹⁾, libreSpeed instance ¹⁰⁾, looking glass available (in IPv6 only for now) ¹¹⁾, DNS F root ¹²⁾ anycast instance as peer in the IXP}. We expect to gain some encouraging outcomes/results (at least 1 Gb of local traffic exchanged, at least 8 ASNs connected) and concrete impacts (more peering culture shared across the country), a year after the start date of the project, say: 08 january 2024 to 07 january 2025.

The list of activities, needed to complete the project, is the following:

• Activity 1: Virtual simulation of integration of new equipment into the existing infrastructure
• Activity 2: Confirmation of Equipment Orders
• Activity 3: Final Drafting of Douala-IX's Governing Documents
• Activity 4: Public Review & Circulation of Douala-IX's Governing draft Documents
• Activity 5: Acceptance of delivery of new equipment
• Activity 6: Integration of new equipment into existing infrastructure
• Activity 7: Installation of free software needed to provide some new or redundant services
• Activity 8: Removal of old equipment
• Activity 9: Open Governance Structure Implementation
• Activity 10: Raising awareness & acculturation to peering
• Activity 11: Adding new peers to the Internet Exchange Point
• Activity 12: Monitoring the impact of changes & Publication of measurement graphs
• Activity 13: Drafting of the project (implementation) final report
• Activity 14: Project impact assessment
• Activity 15: Conclusion - Transmission, publication and public presentation of the final project report.

The following table contains a simplified version of the DIXIUP project provisional Budget. Do kindly find the full and latest version here ¹³⁾.