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Are you interested in finding out how your network’s broadband performance stacks up against others in the industry? Our Internet Service Provider (ISP) members are now eligible to join the ACCC’s broadband monitoring program. Some members had complained to IAA that only larger ISPs (and we know who they are) were able to participate in the program and were then using it for marketing. We’ve all seen those ‘Best ISP as Measured by the ACCC’ claims on the backs of buses and online advertising, but members complained that smaller ISPs aren’t even on the list to compare. Meaning that consumers hunting new services would only see the same old big players, and no-one else. We raised this with the ACCC and now our members are eligible to join.

The Measuring Broadband Australia (MBA) program provides information on the real-world performance of Internet plans. Its aim is to provide Australian consumers with accurate and independent information to assist their purchasing decisions. The ACCC will assist you in getting on board, and provide the measurement equipment, they just need you to assist in recruiting the measuring customers. If you can’t get enough customers to join, then you won’t be measured. Also, if you do join, your first measurement quarter will be disclosed privately so you have the opportunity to check all is correctly in place.

We invite our members to contact the ACCC directly on BroadbandPerformance@accc.gov.au to express their interest in joining the program. This is a fantastic opportunity for greater Internet performance transparency, allowing smaller ISPs to actively participate and be included in the MBA reports, and give you the opportunity to include speed and technical quality in your marketing alongside the big guys.

A year later than scheduled (thank you COVID!), on Friday 19th February the power and aircon was turned off at Perth’s QV1 SR2 room for the first and final time. A big part of our history is now retired.

After quite a few on again / off again moments, our Tech Team Leader, Nick Pratley, took advantage of the borders re-opening and jumped on a westbound plane to complete the shutdown and clean up at the QV1 datacentre.

With coffee (LOTS of coffee in fact) and a fair amount of brute force, SR2 was cleared of old servers and other networking gear, some of which found its way to new homes for a second lease on life. This means we have now consolidated our presence at the site into a single facility that is fit for purpose and vacated the repurposed storerooms and miscellaneous racking.

The work also involved moving some transit networks over to P1 and general tidy ups and rearrangements. The lights are now out, and the air con is room temperature in one of our oldest facilities.

A very BIG thank you to our many long-standing members who took the time to swing by, rehome some kit, say hello to Nick, and supply additional necessary coffee. Job done.

IAA engineers have been busy this month installing six new devices for physical lab testing and to assess different automation stacks for our upcoming portal redesign work.

Whilst currently using a single switch vendor within our peering networks, challenges with automation mean we need to look at a range of vendors including those that support open-sourced methods of automation. As such, we have put three different sets of kit into our lab so we can fully check out what we need to do to provide the solutions for our automation requirements into the future.

Each device has two ports dedicated as ‘member’ ports which go back to a dedicated NIC on a vmware cluster and through to individual VMs running various router software e.g. RouterOS.

This lab will also test the feasibility of newer layer two technologies such as VXLAN and EVPN for use across the IX, and layer three technologies such as Segment-Routing (SPRING) to improve our core network and intercapital management. Our plan is full future proofing as we grow.

Members with services and customers using Amazon should take advantage of some recent expansion and redundancy going in across IX Australia. In particular, Perth’s Amazon connections were recently expanded, so those members on WA-IX should contact Amazon to jump on board. Those members on VIC-IX should similarly bring up new sessions as there is bandwidth aplenty, and nicely reliable redundant services across the exchange. As ever PeeringDB.com has even more detail should you need it.

Get in touch with Amazon via peering-apac@amazon.com

Well, hasn’t this year started with a bang! Who expected industry regulation (in the form of the News Media Code) to be everyone’s family catch up topic this month? Not since Wikipedia went dark have we seen such a stand from a major tech player on a regulatory issue.

We have had some success in our advocacy, too. Members are now being invited to participate in the ACCC broadband measurement program, and we’ve heard good news from members who participated in our round table with NBN Co on their onboarding challenges. Our next regulatory challenge will be Home Affairs’ “codesign process” for critical infrastructure regulation, so please send me your thoughts on that one.

We’ve also seen some great uptake of 100Gbps ports in the wake of us dropping the setup fees. In addition, members should also consider installing redundant links across exchanges to ensure service continuity, particularly into Cloud services. On that note, we’re happy to announce Amazon have expanded to ensure redundancy and capacity, and members wishing to peer and use Amazon services should get in touch with them pronto! If you’re on WA-IX or VIC-IX in particular, new capacity is available.

It was great to see our Tech Team Leader, Nick Pratley, clean out all the older gear and clutter in Perth’s QV1, too. A big thank you to our members who assisted with relieving us of the old gear and keeping him well caffeinated! Get in touch also if you like the masks he was modelling.

Our New Zealand presence is also growing with services now active across Chorus to present peering right around the country. More site planning is going on over there, too, so stay tuned!

On the topic of expansion, we are still office hunting though optimistic we’ll get somewhere before our new Policy Officer (Intern) starts. All the regulation changes mean we need the extra support, and we will be able to assist members more with their (our!) regulatory burden.

Don’t forget to tune into Apricot next week – see Apricot.net for the program.

Members and guests enjoyed a lively and informative discussion featuring experts passionate about technology, its use and regulation at the IAA 2021 Technology Outlook session this week. Many attendees were keen to see ubiquitous, high bandwidth connectivity (either 5G or Starlink) for the myriad of nanotech and microchip manufacturer-driven IoT uses, but cautioned against the lack of security and privacy by design approaches, particularly when it comes to age and cognition appropriate services.

Benefits as simple as being able to visit a public venue have been achieved over the last year with simple online technology which perhaps should have come through national solutions, with better guarantees of privacy and security. Deplatforming was also a hot issue, with the need to balance between rights and service benefits highlighted. The prospect of more regulation on infrastructure providers in order to enforce content standards was considered likely, too.

Of news to most of us was hearing that “Data is not an object of property rights”, apparently property law doesn’t actually run to “data”, so perhaps we technologists should stick to the nuts and bolts, bits and bytes of Internet service delivery. It was a great session, folks. Check out our events page if you want a re-run.

Of course, another huge thank you goes to our panellists: Professor Katina Michael, Trevor Long and Professor Lyria Bennet Moses for their tremendous insights. Once again, a rock star panel!

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