#Trinidad and #Tobago Internet Exchange Point (IXP) launched

Logo of the Trinidad and Tobago Internet Exchange Limited
Logo of the Trinidad and Tobago Internet Exchange Limited

The Trinidad and Tobago Internet Exchange Point Limited (TTIX) have announced that the Internet Exchange Point (IXP) has been activated according to an article in the Trinidad Guardian dated October 9 2014 .

An Internet Exchange Point or IXP for short, allows for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to route data traffic between ISPs locally rather than transmitting the data outside the country.

The TTIX website is http://ix.tt .

TTIX was founded in 2013 by several telecommunication providers in Trinidad and Tobago:

TTiX Board of Directors are made of representatives from these founding members. Its current chairman is Kurleigh Prescod from Columbus Communications.

The physical interconnection point is located at Fujitsu Caribbean (Trinidad) Limited Data Center in Barataria.

The TTIX website shows some statistics being exchanged by some ISPs and the IXP at http://ix.tt/statistics/. Currently, Flow Communications shows 1.73M with an average of 2.67M and a maximum of 10.52M.

This is data that, before an IXP was installed, would have required Flow to transmit this amount of data outside of Trinidad and Tobago, usually to Miami in the United States and then back to Trinidad and Tobago.

The concepts for an IXP in Trinidad and Tobago has been around for several years. In June 2006, the then Ministry of Public Administration and Information (MPAI) published “Internet Bandwidth Management”  for comment.  The Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society (TTCS) published its comments on this Internet Bandwidth Management document in 2006.