OpenIX Beirut is now a participant in the MANRS IXP Programme, with all five of its actions implemented. MANRS, the Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security, is the global initiative that sets out what a responsible network or exchange must do to keep the internet's routing system honest, and its IXP Programme is the version of that standard written for Internet Exchange Points. OpenIX Beirut has met those requirements since the day its first port came up. What is new today is that MANRS has reviewed our setup and validated it, and that we are making a public commitment to keep it that way, alongside the exchanges that carry much of the world's traffic.

The internet has no central authority that decides which network may announce which addresses. Every router takes the routes its neighbours give it largely on trust, and that trust is what route hijacks, route leaks, and address spoofing exploit. A single misconfigured announcement can pull a bank's traffic across a border, take a country's news sites offline, or blackhole a hospital's connectivity, and the network that caused it often never notices. As MANRS puts it, these incidents are global in scale, with one operator's routing problems cascading to impact others. The fix is not one clever device but a set of practices everyone agrees to keep, and an exchange, where dozens of networks meet on one fabric, is where those practices matter most.

We announced OpenIX Beirut on May 13, 2025, with a commitment to run Lebanon's first carrier-neutral Internet Exchange Point for the next ten years. A year on, much of it with the country at war, it is no longer a plan or a launch post. It is a working piece of the country's internet. 39 networks now connect and trade traffic locally instead of hairpinning through another continent, among them 25 of Lebanon's top 30, and together they keep a large share of the country's traffic within local reach. Two of the largest are not yet with us, Ogero (AS42003) and IDM (AS9051), and we will keep working to bring them on, because the job is not finished while any part of Lebanon's traffic still takes the long way around.

Numbers like that do not assemble themselves. If this year proved anything, it is that Lebanon has a networking community worth betting on. Behind every port that came up was an engineer or an architect on the other end, often working around the clock, and often for a network that competes with the one across the link, to get a config right, a fiber lit, a session up. People treated a shared exchange as something worth their nights, not just their job descriptions, and that is what turned a rack of equipment into a living exchange.

OpenIX Beirut is just over a year old, and it has more than proven its premise. The exchange now runs as core infrastructure for the country's networks, and keeping Lebanon's traffic at home is no longer something we have to argue for.

Getting here also taught us where the next gap is. An exchange localizes interconnection: networks meet locally and trade traffic directly. It does not, by itself, localize content. Today we are introducing OpenCache: an open caching network, built and operated by P Foundation, that serves content from inside the local network, for every content provider, not just the platforms big enough to build their own.

As we enter a new year, it’s a good moment to look back at 2025 and see how Lebanon’s Internet evolved—from traffic growth and device shifts to routing, security, and ISP market share.

Understanding how a country’s local networks change over time helps explain performance and resilience, and highlights where local interconnection can make a real difference. That’s also the spirit behind OpenIX Beirut and P Foundation’s pledge to make connectivity more local so more traffic can stay local when it makes sense.

I think this might be my fourth draft about ONS (Open Notification Service). The first was for the initial announcement, the second for the milestone of sending 1 billion notifications, and now this one. Neither of the earlier drafts made it to the website for one reason or another, so I hope this version covers everything and more.

Before founding P Foundation, I was an early cloud adopter, going back to Google App Engine in 2008-9, and I continued to use the cloud for most projects. But when I started P Foundation in 2021, we made a deliberate, day-one decision to build and operate our own infrastructure end-to-end: from the network layer to the hardware, and eventually run our own data centers.

We initially envisioned OpenIX as a program that provides grants, training, technical assistance, and equipment to set up micro-efficient IXs neutral hubs where networks openly peer and enjoy low-cost colocation. The vision was to bring internet content and service providers together locally, enabling data to be exchanged within Lebanon instead of traversing distant overseas hubs.

The past year has been one of immense growth and learning for our team and the communities we serve. We've made significant strides in building stronger networks, responding to emerging crises, and laying the groundwork for more impactful initiatives. Yet, as we reflect on our progress, it's clear that there is much more to be done. The journey has just begun, and the challenges we face in such a dynamic region demand continued adaptability, commitment, and courage. Our roadmap to 2027 isn't just a plan—it's a promise to keep pushing forward, to create lasting change.

With the escalating potential for military conflict in Lebanon, the P Foundation has activated its crisis response plan. This initiative is undertaken in close partnership with the Lebanese Ministry of Telecom, and local organizations.

Similar to MediaGuard Continuity Plan, this plan augments the existing P Foundation programs, enhancing their capacity and introducing new services.

Given the recent escalaction in Gaza, we perceive an escalating risk of military conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

We're concerned that many media outlets, despite having business continuity plans, may be underestimating the scale of a potential conflict.