Amish Munshi amish_munshi@fastmail.fm wrote: __________

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On Thu, 2004-08-12 at 12:01 +0530, Rishi wrote:

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I know Google Groups 2 is in beta right now... but would you

guys (moderators)

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I know that my reason is not practical, but on paper this stays true. """"Why should all of us user servers located in US to send and receive mails? If we have a mailing list mail server located in India, we live in India, and our personal mail servers (hopefully) are in India. Why should we waste international bandwidth on this?"""

More important, even if you have indian servers and an indian ISP, you use international bandwidth. Last I checked a month ago, no ISP in india provided interconnect to each other. So, you use siffy at home to connect to vsnl email accounts at bom4 server in mumbai, your data goes through some gateway in USA bcause vsnl and siffy refuse to interconnect.

I don't know whose fault it is, but I have been told govt is planning to force large ISPs to interconnect here.

This is discussed extensively on another list (exchinnet at yahoogroups). Several interested independent persons campaigned strongly for an 'exchange' (the facility that handles such a task - google for 'IX' if you would like to learn about this) and to the total dismay of all, the ISPs complicitly handed over the job to GoI, which later set up NIXI in Delhi and Mumbai.

Unfortunately, NIXI is almost completely underutilised, mainly because its terms and conditions for interconnection are perverse and unrealistic. The result is the major ISPs, several of whom have created their own international bandwidth, do not use NIXI, and it is too expensive and too much hard work for the small ISPs (assuming there are any left), because a little professional networking skill is needed for their admins, who mostly don't exist at any real level of competence.

I cannot see any reason why the government should 'force' anyone to do anything these days. It has consistently hogged tasks that it had no business to get into over the years, probably because when they succeed (and even when they don't: who looks once the ribbon cutting is over?) the politicians look good and the bureaucrats are given shiny awards for their dedicated years of spouting Sanskrit slokas.

If the exchange is run on a professional basis then not only mail but even mirrors will come up fast here, saving uncountable millions of bucks in international bandwidth now being wasted on pointless shuttling up and down of packets that need never have hit those circuits. What the government needs to do is ensure that the playing fields are as level as possible for all kinds of participants, not only MNCs or conglomerates with cross interests in a number of media plays.

Sadly, even the smaller ISPs have not acted to rectify this situation, because (and this is my opinion, Devdas - who also was active on exchinnet - is in a far better position to comment) the best thing to do was set up an alternative to NIXI. They didn't do it two years ago, and I doubt they will now, when they are even more squeezed on revenues.