Mohammed Rudman is the managing director of Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN).
In his over a decade experience in the information and communications technology, Rudman has worked as network administrator in Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) from where he moved to Galaxy Backbone. He spoke to chike onwuegbuchi on how IXPN will help stimulate growth of local content on the internet.

Objective of IXPN in Keeping Local Traffic Local
Right now, almost all the providers are connected to our network and they are exchanging local traffic. First of all, we need to ask ourselves what is traffic?
Traffic is content. Even though big networks are connected, but they are just part of ‘iball’ networks.
Because if you divide the network into two, you will have people trying to browse, but what are they trying to browse? Content; so, the two, the end users and the content work together.
Presently, the content in Nigeria is low, even though we have huge network. So, networks that are iballs are the kinds of network we need in Nigeria.
They are networks that are heavy in content. We lack those contents heavy networks in Nigeria. Although the major network providers are connected, the traffic is not at its high capacity, because the content is not enough. We have very few content providers that are connected at our exchange point. For instance, we have Google. And Google is a network that provides content as well. The whole essence of coming together, even though some are idle, is that by the time we are together we can attract global content players to be part of the Nigerian network. At the same time, in coming together we are trying to see how those ISPs and telcos can provide value added services by hosting contents locally. It’s already happening.
Big data centers that were formally not available are now here with more coming on board. In April this year we organized an event on Local Internet Content aimed at bringing the ISPs, telecos, as the owners of the data centers, to engage them with the registrars of .ng and other registrars that are registering domains and hosting contents and even to the end users that generate contents like the iROKOtv and others; so that we can discuss issues on how to host contents in Nigeria.
So, there is an improvement in the exchange of traffic locally. We can see an annual growth of 300 to 400%.

Importance of the Local Internet Content Forum
After such engagements with stakeholders we usually come out with positions before implementations. The issue is that we do not see result immediately, but, I can say that from that event we have recorded immediate results.
The traffic at the exchange is increasing; we have seen major companies trying to shift ground from hosting abroad to hosting in Nigeria. One of them is Upper Link Limited which is the leading registrar in Nigeria. They have promised to migrate some of their servers into two Nigerian companies, because they have realized that those organizations have the data centers to host their contents.
They have signed their agreement. What we have to do now is to monitor if they have really moved their servers.
Secondly, we had discussions with the iROKOtv, the CEO is actually convinced towards the local hosting of contents. They are seriously thinking of replicating their serves into Nigeria to serve the Nigerian consumers.
Thirdly, the Ministry of Science and Technology is going to mandate all parastatals, ministries and agencies to register .ng and possibly host in the country and to have all email addresses that are locally driven. It is not going to be business as usual, especially for official purposes. Before now, we see government officials exchanging governments’ emails via personal emails.
I have seen a high ranked army official having Yahoomail on his call card, not as an additional mail, but it serves as his official email. So, from the event it was emphasized that by 2014 such emails should not be accepted in the government corridors.
As stakeholders, we do not make policies rather we brainstorm and make our positions known to the government and stakeholders, especially on how to digitize content; Nigeria has a lot of content. But the challenge is how to digitize and give access to them locally.

How Do We Digitize Contents
There are different techniques and organizations that are responsible for it. We need to find a way to achieve that.
And each ministry, department and agency (MDA) has to digitize themselves, so that one entity will not just be responsible for that. For instance, our universities have the responsibility to turn their libraries to e-books, projects and thesis of students at different levels.
That will enable other students across the globe to have access to it; that is huge content. These are huge contents that are seating on the floor of libraries of universities. In some cases, the contents are digitized, because nobody writes thesis now or projects with typewriters, so why can’t the school authorities start accepting the soft copies?
In the Immigration Service, they have started digitizing peoples’ passports, data, among others; the same thing with driver’s licence, these are processes that will generate digital contents for the country.
Also, the National Museum has a lot of information which should be readily available. Have you heard of the National War Museum (NWM) in Umuahia? I was there and amazed over the history of the war as depicted in the museum.
The tools used during the war and how they were used are there in the museum. But is there any website for that; I coincidentally got to know about the place.
There are a lot of artifacts there such as aircrafts, tankers, and images of tools manufactured locally by the Biafra Army. So, whose responsibility is it to digitizer this?
It falls under the purview of each of the MDAs to digitize what they have, whether old or new documents. Even some of our songs are going into extinction. We need to host them online as they are the contents we are referring to.

Eko Connect Project
It is about connecting schools. It is a project we are hoping to expand. At the same time, we are looking at how to bring other schools together. Presently, the Pan Atlantic University is now connected to the exchange; other higher educational institutions will join.
Earlier, we worked with Google, because the Google University Access programme is where and they are giving free bandwidth at the exchange point, but the substantial networking now is that National Universities Commission (NUC) has awarded the contract for National Educational and Research Network. About 27 Federal universities will be connected together.
We hope that part of the legs of the research institutions’ project will connect to the IXPN, so that other universities that are not connected will benefit from the interconnectivity.
Since we intend to be at the six geo-political zones, we hope to be the link that will connect the private universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, research institutions and other relevant organizations.
For Eko Connect, it entails small cluster of schools that have connected to the exchange. And other institutions that are not part of the cluster are getting connected now. The national and educational research network (NERN) is about connectivity.
When we talk about the exchange point, it is all about inter-connecting ISPs, telecos, content providers; to an extent we can still use the same platform to interconnect schools, and since the focus is on IP, you can communicate with each other.

Benefits Of Schools Connecting To NERN
It is mainly about collaborations on researches, exchange of ideas. Currently, you have schools conducting research on a particular subject and the other school conducting same research but for the same purpose. By the time they are together, they can put their resources together to conduct the same research.
It is a common phenomenon in Nigeria: students duplicate projects between one university and another.
But when all the projects are online, it will minimize such plagiarism. It will heighten the level of students’ interest in conducting research or writing projects.
When lecturers have access to all the projects and theses, it will be difficult to duplicate. With software that will be made available, it will be easy to detect when a student copies, even if it is a paragraph, just as it is in other developed countries.
Other benefits include, it gives them access to cheaper internet service; as they are coming together they buy internet in bulk. In the Nigerian ICT Forum there is what is called Bandwidth Consortium; it is about schools coming together, buy together so they can have negotiating power.
The economy of scale happens there. The whole idea of the internet started with the universities, why? They wanted to have the processing powers; one university may have supper computer, the other may not, so they share tools.
Doctors can collaborate and do surgeries. A lecturer from a particular university can give a lecture in another university without being physically present there. The possibilities are endless.