Intra-Asia IP Traffic

This post is closely related to the previous one, except that here we discuss about Internet traffic not about bandwidth capacity. I found an interesting statement given by a REACH official:

"In 1998, 100% of IP traffic between countries in the APAC was transmitted via the US. In 2004 it was around 30% (estimated)."



I do not know what criterion is used by REACH to come to those figures. But pesonally, I feel it is highly possible to be true. In around 1995, I remembered that when I called "traceroute" from my university to any local ISP, it gave me several US-hops! At that time I was dreaming a local version of NSFNET in this country (yes sure, later I knew that this is the timeframe where NSFNET was decommisioned!).

Many people at that time only concerned on establishing connections to the center of the Net i.e. the US and did not care about anything else. But slowly the "message" is spread and more and more people understood the idea behind this new thing. ISPs were making both bilateral and public peering(*). The govt has updated the regulation for encouraging local connections. Is it enough to suppress the inefficiency? Maybe! But I believe that right now intra-Asia IP traffic that travel first to the US is still in the figure of 10% or even more.


(*) for local readers, please note that peering != "piring" ! :-D