On April 21, 2009 NWT participated in the SPB-IX Peering Seminar*. The Seminar was organized in St. Petersburg by the autonomous non-commercial organization RosNIIROS** jointly with the German DE-CIX* with the support of MSK-IX* and focused on inter-operator relations in the process of Internet access services.

It was the first such event held by RosNIIROS in St. Petersburg. The Seminar was attended by about 90 people, including representatives of PeterStar, Comstar-OTS, OBIT, Effortel, Petersburg City Network etc. Papers were presented by RosNIIROS Director Yelena Voronina, Deputy Development Director of RosNIIROS Konstantin Chumachenko, representative of Deutscher Commercial Internet Exchange Frank Orlowski and others.

NWT was represented at the Seminar by Anton Sokolov, chief expert at the Communications Operators Department. He presented the paper “NWT’s IP-network Development Evolution”, pointing out that “the centralized system of Internet-traffic purchase on the basis of the St. Petersburg Branch’s Internet-site with the further traffic distribution by the own main network to the regional centers made it possible to reduce the Company’s expenses on the purchase of Internet-traffic. It contributed significantly to the development of broadband access services, traffic growth and the necessity of increasing outside channels. One of the possible methods of reducing the load on outside channels and increasing coherence is the organization of mutually profitable direct joints with the providers and, as the most rapid and convenient solution, participation in the SPB-IX project”.

For the first time, NWT joined the SPB-IX participants at the traffic exchange point at 57 Borovaya ul. in May 2008. At present, the Company is studying the outlooks for its presence at the traffic exchange point at 18 Bolshaya Morskaya ul.

North-West Telecom conducts an open peering policy, is ready for cooperation with all providers and considers all kinds of proposals for the arrangement of peering joints not only in St. Petersburg, but also in the regional centers of the North-West Federal District. North-West Telecom invites communications operators to cooperate not only in respect of direct joints, but also in respect of all wide range of NWT’s telecommunications services.

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SPB - IX ( Internet - eXchange ), MSK - IX , DE - mean St . Petersburg , Moscow , German Internet - traffic exchange points

RosNIIROS (Russian Research Institute of Public Networks Development) was set up in 1992 and now operates the Russian Backbone Network – RBNet ensuring Internet access for regional scientific and educational networks as well as performing the functions of the Technical Center of the upper-level Russian national domain RU. One of the Institute’s key activities is the development of Internet-eXchange points. In 2008, RosNIIROS completed the first stage of the regional IX building program, providing Internet-eXchange points in all 7 federal districts of Russia. RosNIIROS also organizes thematical conferences on peering, which were formerly held in Moscow and, accordingly, were called MSK-IX.