Brian Longwe said effective Internet traffic exchange between networks is essential for a healthy and robust Internet.

Africa is still far behind in recognising and meeting the critical need for Internet Exchange Points (IXPs).

That’s according to Brian Munyao Longwe, CEO and co-founder of Malawi-based Converged Technology Networks.

He says African experts may understand the need but are "either lazy or unwilling to put in the time and effort to build these facilities".

Longwe wrote on his LinkedIn page over the weekend: "A big part of this has to do with the lack of skills and knowledge in dynamic routing and especially the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the language spoken at IXPs all over the world."

He added that effective Internet traffic exchange between networks is essential for a healthy and robust Internet. Longwe stated that the facilities that enable this are IXPs.

He wrote: “At an IXP connected networks (mostly) exchange traffic at no cost, and can focus their resources on building bigger pipes to carry and handover traffic to each other as fast as possible.

“Unfortunately, in Africa we are still way behind in recognising the vital need for IXPs.”

At Converged Technology Networks, Longwe said: “We have decided to take a bold step to set up a peering lab at a location in the capital city where almost all of Malawi’s networks convene.

“This will help local network engineers set up various peering and traffic exchange scenarios and develop their BGP knowledge and skills. Who knows, this might even lead to an explosion of IXPs as a deeper understanding of internetwork traffic exchange is developed.”