[lugm.org] Announcing a Mauritian tech forum

[Nishal Goburdhan]

On 17 Dec 2013, at 10:33 PM, selven <pcthegreat at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ipv6, great stuffs, but why would i change if currently v4 is not much a problem for me. Even as a tech user i just adapt only out of need to keep myself as lazy as possible.

this appears to largely be a repeat of avinash's question ("what does IPv6 bring"), so i'll try to answer both here *briefly*.

the short answer is that you live and work in an environment where the basis for your connection (IPv4) is now depleted.  there is *no* other sustainable solution for the future other than IPv6, so if you plan to continue to live and work in this environment, when do you plan to develop the skills to do this?  when you absolutely need it in a pinch, or now (or, 5years ago) so that you're prepared for this transition.

you're blindly buffered into believing that NAPT is going to continue to scale, and allow you to run your business in the same manner you do now.   because, you see this (NAPT) working in your small networks now, and equate that similar operation to what a carrier would need to do, at the same level of operation.  that's...quite incorrect!  and it's simple to understand - resources (memory, ports, hash-algorithms) are all finite, and *will* be consumed by ever greedy, ever hungy additional connections.  

i always find that amusing;  particularly, since the blue-chip vendors who are building these large carrier-grade NAT boxes, are the same ones saying:  "um..guys, sure, we're selling you this stuff, and we know it won't scale....(but we still want your money)".  

there are many more reasons why you should go IPv6 :-)   but i promised my answer would be brief.  and there are other people here that probably also want to contribute (you know who you are!)

you can get lots more info here:  http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/ipv6/all-ipv6-resources/


> Mauritian hosting easy to say but how do you provide cheap hosting given the crappy connection versus price we have here?

economists talk about economies of scale that are needed to drive down prices.  
how do you *ever* plan to drive down pricing to what you're willing to accept as "decent", if you don't start building scale ? 

if you continue to invest in the $3 SaaS $colo_provided_vm, you're never going to grow your local business sectors.  well, that is until your regulator realises that, as a country you're spending XX-million hosting outside the country, and in an effort to improve the BoP, they pass a law that says all mauritian content *must* be hosted in-country.   (really, you think i'm dreaming?  think again!!)

today, we have lots of colo centres in ZA;  local hosting is a fraction of what it used to be a decade ago.
it's still more expensive than a VM in SFO, but, there's sufficient realisation that there is true value in keeping content in country.
(for a start, it actually *does* make it a lot tougher for the NSA to get to... :-p)
how are you - as the assumed informed crowd - promoting this want/need/desire to keep things in-country? 
because - honestly - if you don't sit up and promote these ideas, whom do you expect to?  
do you active choose *not* to purchase from a non-local site?   
and then *tell* the operator why you're boycotting him?  

true story:  when i landed in MU in 2009, i needed a bank account.  i thought SBM would be the natural bank to use;  that is, until i saw that their website was hosted in australia.  i wrote to them, to tell them that they had lost a customer.  and *why*.  if more people did that, don't you think that they'd sit up, and take notice?   between then, and 2012, when i left, i convinced 4 other expat staff at our MU office, *not* to use SBM, and in each case to send SBM a letter (we cheated;  they used my template).  you - as a consumer - need to start using your single most important weapon - your wallet - to determine how you make purchasing decisions.

on my last trip to MU (circa May 2013) i spoke to an ISP that had recently put in a direct interconnection, between ZA and MU.
i just checked - it's still in place.  so, right now, that's roughly 60ms between JNB and ebene.
right now, both their regular competitors have roughly 400ms back to MU from my home in JNB.
they (progressive ISP) were looking for ideas on how to resell this capacity.  
out of curiousity, i asked them for regular pricing;  they were on par 15% cheaper than two other larger ISPs that i know of.
so.  cheaper, and faster.  mm...can you honestly tell me that you can't think of at least seven different business ideas here, none of which involve hosting in MU?
(and really, if you can't, then let me know if you have oodles of venture capital, because i certainly can !!)

how do you eat an elephant  ?


> Singapore, some ips go through malaysia some still goes through linx weird peering. That is also why am unable to use my quakelive premium account in singapore any more, latency is a b*tch.

so, in one sentence, you complain about latency being a b***h,.....but, then collectively, largely don't see a problem with overseas hosting?
something smells fishy here :-)


> How would you propose to solve the hosting problem without having to give up all your fortune to MT and still get any profit out of it? Setting up local exchange points and bypassing isp crazy rivalry? Who sponsors the scene?

i have enough equipment in my home right now, to sponsor you, if you wanted to build an internet exchange point.  
and speaking as someone that currently manages three (3) active IXes, i can tell you that it doesn't take a lot of time and effort to run these.  but why build a new one, when there's already an IX in ebene?  better questions would be:
* why isn't this IX working? 
* what can be done to revive it?
* if the ISPs aren't going to do this themselves, how can we, as civil society, organise ourselves to get this done?
don't downplay the role of well organised public outcry.  the mybroadband forum that i mentioned earlier, managed to get some amazing stuff done to get transparency from the different broadband operators here.  still not at the point where we'd want, but...better than before.

there are more operators than MT (yip, true story!).  so start "voting with your wallet" and showing support to the other operators, who would probably be really interesting in looking for new business ideas, as they *need* to eat into MT's market share...
it's still possible to deploy simple services, and virtualise around that - heck it's so much easier to do this now, than it was a decade ago.  if you hope to make money out of selling the simple web-hosting, perhaps you'd better re-think your model.  operators are fast realising that bandwidth, hosting etc are commodities, and the "S" in ISP is what people really want.

i can say more, but that would require you wave that venture capital cheque at me :-)


> :) the problem is not technical it is with the people itself no one can do anything about it because of the society's corruptive nature.

honestly, selven, that's a defeatist argument, and i know, that you know better.
if what you're saying is true, then no country with a single incumbent could have ever hope to be successful.  and history shows us otherwise.  so instead of throwing your hands up in the air, and crying foul, find ways to work within the system, while getting the system to change to what you/society/industry/blah believe it should be.  
where *is* your civil society representation?  what happened to ISOC-MU?   who represents your individual interests in policy making (if this is a concern for you?)   a year or so ago, there was a consultative paper request for the redelegation of .MU, put forth by the ICTA;  i recall, because i posted it here.  did anyone (besides SM) comment on it?  :-)
before this de-reails any more from the original thread, i'd like to echo what i said earlier:  for this (or anything) to succeed, it requires community participation.


> Binary.mu might work, i remember when i was still running hackers.mu it used to run decently with decent amount of ppl without me actually doing anything to it. Problem is you need lots of patience to keep focus into moderating the place.
> Good luck for binary.mu


....or, you need a plan to make, and keep it sustainable.

again - i'll remind you - i raised these two issues, because, the "techies" are often looked upon to shape the way things move.  if you're not seeing the value of, and/or need for either IPv6, or local hosting, well, quite frankly, i'd be quite worried about your vision of the future...

--n.