Curacao to host second Caribbean Internet Peering Forum

Curacao will host the Caribbean’s second regional Internet Peering Forum from June 8 to 9, 2016.

Called CarPIF2, the upcoming meeting will bring together Internet service providers, Internet exchange points, telecommunications regulators and infrastructure providers for two days of in-depth talks on regional ICT development-related issues.

Several major Internet and telecommunications industry players from the private sector, civil society, academia, regional governments and the international technical community are expected to converge in the southern Caribbean for the high-profile event.

Left to right, Bevil Wooding, Internet Strategist, Packet Clearing House and Shernon Osepa, Regional Affairs Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Internet Society, announce event dates for the second Caribbean Peering and Interconnection Forum (CarPIF2) at the 10th regional gathering of the Caribbean Network Operators Group, Belize City, November 4, 2015. PHOTO: GERARD BEST

The event dates were announced at the 10th regional gathering of the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG) in Belize. CarPIF co-organisers Bevil Wooding and Shernon Osepa described the upcoming event as an important milestone in the develop of the Internet in the region.

“CARPIF is about promoting regional and global Internet development and growing the Caribbean Internet economy, and that is something that we should all be very interested in pursuing,” Osepa said, speaking to a wide cross-section of Caribbean technology professionals in the audience.

Osepa, who is the manager of Regional Affairs for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Internet Society, said that he thought that the second iteration of CarPIF would be “even bigger” than the first , which was held in Barbados in May.

“We have already heard from some providers that were not present in Barbados, that they will be present in Curacao.”

Bevil Wooding, an Internet Strategist with Packet Clearing House and one of the drivers behind CarPIF, described the forum as “a significant step towards the development of the Caribbean Internet economy.”

CarPIF2 will be hosted by AMS-IX, a Netherlands-based Internet exchange with a regional deployment in Curacao. It is an initiative of Packet Clearing House and the Internet Society, with the support of Caribbean Telecommunications Union and CaribNOG.

Bevil Wooding, an Internet Strategist with Packet Clearing House and one of the founders of CaribNOG, described CarPIF2 as “a significant step towards the development of the Caribbean Internet economy.”

Martin Hannigan, Director of Networks and Data Center Architecture at Akamai Technologies, said he was expecting more North American networks to take part in CarPIF2. Akamai is a leading content delivery network services provider.

“Today, I communicated with some of my colleagues and there was high interest, and an offer of sponsorship. I would not be surprised if you saw Microsoft, and potentially Amazon, and some representation either through presence or sponsorship from Netflix,” Hannigan said.

These kinds of forums will allow practitioners to meet and build relationships with other stakeholders from across the regional industry, Hannigan said.

Claire Craig, Doctoral Researcher, UWI SALISES

Another CaribNOG participant, Claire Craig, Enterprise Applications Support Manager at The University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine, said she was also looking forward to the meeting, but for a different reason.

“I think peering is an important concept that we in the Caribbean need to understand,” said Craig, a PhD student at the UWI Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies.

“My doctoral research focuses on Internet exchange points, which are also known as IXPs. And IXPs are one of the places where content providers can interconnect. So I expect that CarPIF will help me to understand the Caribbean peering landscape even better.”