We are preparing to refresh our existing fleet of route server hardware. The new servers will use 2 x 10G-LR fibre links to diverse switches in a Layer 2 bonded configuration for improved resilience against planned and unplanned network outages. We look forward to giving you more information on the upcoming works, so stay tuned to our newsletters and socials.
IX Australia’s new out-of-band (OOB) network has officially been commissioned and is now being used in production! Powered by ZPE’s NodeGrid devices and utilising state-of-the-art technologies such as WireGuard VPNs, this solution replaces the original OOB network that was running on end-of-life equipment. The new solution (high-level overview shown below) includes three redundant head-ends with LTE cellular connectivity, including one hosted completely external to our networks. This ensures access to all of our devices in the worst possible events, including those resulting in the direst of outages. The new network has already come in handy with a recent outage involving an OSPF process failure on one of our WA-IX switches – watch out for an upcoming blog post that will discuss this further.
Well, here we are entering into a new financial year already. The team have been hard at work completing a few projects from last year, as well as the final phases of testing on our new member portal! It all looks so elegant and simple, it’s hard to see the huge amounts of effort that have gone into the layout, neat new calculators and extra functionality! That’s the secret of good design, really, isn’t it. We’re also just about to announce our new switch vendor to take our core to the next level: once again, all the hard work the team have put into avidly testing and configuring (not to mention deliberately misconfiguring) will yield us a significant extra capacity. Fingers crossed the supply chains will deliver before we do actually hit some ceilings.
One surprise I did get this month, and not a pleasant one, was the announcement of new obligations for cyber security reporting. While we knew they were in the pipeline, we had expected a bit more discussion and even negotiation before they came into effect. Indeed, the message that these obligations were not coming into immediate effect was repeated by the Department of Home Affairs in their briefing to affected industries held on 30 June 2022. A week later, the Minister declared a new licence condition for carriers and carriage service providers to establish a mandatory reporting regime for cyber security incidents, with the federal government using provisions in the Telecommunications Act to bring the industry into line with other critical infrastructure sectors. Just when we thought there was a new Sheriff in town… Thankfully our team is on the ball, and you’ll see new guides on our web site to explain what you need to do.
Happy new year everyone
Narelle
Complete this form to receive all our latest news, events and updates.
