"MONGOLIA INTERNET EXCHANGE" PROJECT
http://www.mix.mn

In the late 1980s internet traffic within academic and government communities in the US had grown to the point a national backbone to carry traffic between individual networks to ensure continued efficiency and traffic flow became necessary. Responsibility for this backbone was given to the US National Science Foundation (NSF). NSFNet extended to major network hub points within the US. Foreign academic Internet networks could also access the backbone, creating an access point for all academic and government networks to share traffic.
 
Commercial internet networks began to emerge in the late 1980s as well. These networks could not originate or terminate commercial traffic through access to the NSFNet due to policies preventing government funded resources being used for commercial ventures. In the early 1990s the problem of commercial traffic routing was solved through the creation of the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX), which allowed non-NSFNet acceptable use policy networks to share routing and traffic without touching the NSFNet backbone.
 
As the Internet developed within the US and other international locations, additional exchange points became necessary to not only ensure acceptable use among funded networks, but also to begin the process of separating networks such as the military MILNet from academic and commercial traffic, while still allowing routing between the networks. These exchange points included the Federal Internet Exchange (FIX) and the NSF funded International Connection Manager (ICM), which allowed international routing independent of the NSFNet for non-US academic Internet networks connecting via the United States.
 
In the early 1990s, as commercial internet continued to grow at a rapid pace, the NSF made a decision to get out of the Internet exchange point business, and privatized Internet Exchange points by giving contracts for the Network Access Points (NAPs <New York/Chicago/Pacific>) to commercial telecommunications companies to manage Internet traffic exchange between not only commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but also manging the gateways between NSF, independent academic networks, and government networks. 
 
The NAPs were soon followed by the Metropolitan Area Exchanges, and several private exchanges. Outside of the US, exchanges began to emerge such as the London Internet exchange (LINX), and the NSPIXP in Japan. Until these IXs were created, nearly all non-US Internet traffic was interconnected via exchange points within the United States. This resulted in great inefficiencies in routing, additional expense for international leased lines carrying an always increasing traffic load, and the fact Internet traffic was changing from US-centric content to national and localized content.
 
Mongolia Internet
 
Mongolia entered the Internet community in December 1994, when Datacom established the first Internet connection to Sprint via a VSAT connection provided by PanAmSat. At this time Mongolia is provided by seven independent ISPs, serving commercial, academic, and government communities. All Mongolian ISPs are connected to the Internet via satellite connections either to the US or Hong Kong1 [1].
 
The Mongolia Internet Exchange
 
In January 2001 leaders of the Mongolia ISP community gathered in Ulaanbaatar to discuss the possibility of participating in a national Internet Exchange. The requirement was simple – all Mongolian ISPs were interconnected via Tier 1 and Tier 2 ISPs located within the United States. Thus, if a Datacom user needed to connect to content hosted by Bodicom, the actual transfer of data went via the United States. This created many problems for the Mongolia Internet community – both users and network providers.
 
This is a simple dynamic – if the Mongolian ISP is connected to the internet via a satellite connection, the minimum latency between Mongolia and distant content is 650ms+, or over ½ second for each bit of data. If the request and delivery of content is among Mongolian ISPs, then the actual transfer time is at least two times the one way latency, giving a minimum latency of 1300ms for Mongolia to Mongolia traffic.
 
To further compound this problem, users in Mongolia are rapidly increasing, the access speeds offered by ISPs is increasing (now 56kbps), and the type/volume of requested content, both international and Mongolian is increasing. This growth places a tremendous burden on the telecommunications transmission requirements each ISP has to ensure an acceptable level of service for users. In many cases the ISP’s transmission lines are being used at 100% capacity, resulting in dropped transmission packets of data, retransmissions of dropped data packets, and a resulting compounded latency for completing Internet transactions.

In addition, as each Mongolian ISP is connected to different "upstream” Tier 1 or Tier 2 ISPs within Hong Kong or the United States, there is also potential for either congestion or additional latency between the US based networks, which the Mongolian ISP community has no control. This is clearly an unacceptable condition for continued growth of the Mongolia Internet community and industry.
 
Finally, as Mongolian companies and agencies desiring a web presence were finding the performance of Mongolia-Mongolia ISP routing unacceptable, they began to host their content on servers located within the US – eliminating at least ½ the latency experienced within Mongolia, thus taking additional revenue out of the Mongolia ISP industry. This clearly did not encourage rapid development of a web based economy, or further Business-to-Business (B2B) network enabled growth.
 
Thus, in January 2001 the ISP community agreed to participate in the Mongolia Internet Exchange (MIX), and agreed to have an independent non-ISP manager (Infocon). Planning for the MIX took until April 2001, when the MIX went into service with Erdemnet, Datacom, and Mobicom. BodiCom joined the MIX later during summer 2001. 
 
Traffic between MIX members has continued to grow during 2001. There was a period when Erdemnet experienced transmission failure on their local loop connection to the MIX, however that has been corrected by August 2001, and network performance has returned to normal. Figure 1 shows a sample of daily traffic by transmission BYTES within one participating MIX network.

This sample indicates that during normal business hours there is approximately 7k BYTES per second being transferred within the Mongolia ISP community. This would be about 56kbps in transmission load, doubled for the return content from the local ISP whose data is being requested. This is transmission capacity which is now available for non-Mongolian international origin content. The result is a much better experience for the local user (local latency is less the 10ms per transaction –vs- 1300ms in the non-MIX model), and better use of international transmission resources for the ISP.
 
Raw statistics are available to each participating member of the MIX as a service to the ISP. Additional statistics and performance information is also available through the MIX support web site2 [2] for participating members.
 
Today, the MIX is averaging approximately 377 GigaBytes domestic transfer each day among Mongolian ISPs3 [3]. As the remaining Mongolian ISPs are able to join the MIX, we expect this traffic to greatly increase, accomplishing the major MIX objectives:
· Better user Internet experience 
· Reduced international leased line transmission burden for Mongolia-Mongolia traffic 
· Create an environment which encourages creation of additional network based industry such as B2B, gaming/entertainment, and education 
 
Future of Mongolia Internet Exchange
 
The MIX is meeting basic needs of the Mongolian Internet community. While there are four ISPs participating in the MIX, participation of the remaining ISPs will greatly benefit the Internet community. The MIX is prepared to continue upgrading equipment, management systems, performance indicators, and utilities to ensure service to the Mongolia ISP community, and user community. The MIX is also prepared to support additional government, academic, and international initiatives intended to develop network based or enabled communications and business models within Mongolia.


1 [1] "E-Readiness Assessment of Mongolia for the Networked World," Infocon Company
2 [2] http://www.mix.mn
3 [3] Source data is updated daily at http://www.pacific-tier.com/Infocon/MIX-Statistics.xls