With Mweb's cancellation of its Internet peering with Telkom, Telkom ADSL users who do not have international bandwidth are in for a rude surprise when they try and access sites hosted on Mweb's servers as they will no longer have access to them!
The sites affected include the two very popular sites News24 and DSTV.
Telkom's Internet packages include a large portion of free local bandwidth. And once capped, a Telkom user can only access via the local bandwidth, a feature many used to download DSTV movies, probably the only usage that makes local bandwidth interesting.
Well guess what. Now that peering between Mweb and Telkom has been cancelled, traffic between the two ISP's is routed internationally, which means no more News24 and DSTV downloads for Telkom ADSL clients using local only bandwidth.
I'm guessing that a large number of Telkom ISP clients are going to move over to Mweb's uncapped offering.
Interesting times!
What is Peering?
International traffic has historically been very expensive so, in order to cut down on unnecessary traffic across the international network, various peering points have been created.
These peering points allow ISP's to enter into an agreement whereby traffic between their sites is routed via the peering point rather than the international Internet; a sort of short circuit if you like which means that the ISP's save a bundle of cash, cash not always passed on to their clients.
Unfortunately peering is not always a free lunch. Some of the larger ISP's, Telkom included, have reaped a large bonsella therefrom. Mweb has gotten tired of paying out for a non value-added service and has decreed that it will only peer with ISP's if peering is free. This means that not only will Telkom not get income, it will have to purchase international bandwidth. Double whammy!
