BGP Interconnection in Latin America and the Caribbean

28/01/2021

LACNIC presented a new study on interconnection among the countries in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean based on information obtained from the BGP routing tables registered and stored by global collectors.

According to the report titled BGP Interconnection in Latin America and the Caribbean prepared by expert Augusto Mathurín under the coordination of LACNIC and within the framework of the Strengthening of Regional Internet Infrastructure project, network operators in the region still exhibit certain deficiencies at the local interconnection level. Thus, traffic between nearby countries must often use distant Internet exchange points, located in the United States or Europe.

The study stresses that the installation of multiple Internet exchange points (IXPs) has helped to improve this situation. In this sense, some time ago LACNIC launched Simón, a project that seeks to generate information by measuring latency levels between countries and use this information to estimate traffic volumes.

The new study also analyzes the characteristics of regional interconnection, examining global BGP routing tables in order to compare basic characteristics of the routes published in the region and draw conclusions on the behavior of operators who publish prefixes.

Main indicators. Mathurín’s research covered all the countries that are part of the LACNIC service region and allowed visualizing where the autonomous systems of each country connect when they leave their national borders. According to his findings, less than a third of the countries connect directly with other autonomous systems in Latin America and the Caribbean. “The autonomous systems that provide the largest transit capacity from the countries of the region to the rest of the world are registered either with ARIN or with the RIPE NCC,” the report warns.

Mathurín concludes that the situation presents an opportunity to generate new connections between peers and Internet exchange points, as well as potential investments by telecommunications companies wishing to develop regional transport business opportunities.

The study also analyzed data on announced IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes.

We invite you to read the full paper, which is available here.