A huge welcome to the new year to all our Members and friends! Here’s to a strong and prosperous 2024. First of all, as a special new year’s present, our new iVLL pricing comes into place from 1 March 2024. For most of you this will represent a significant discount as we pass on the lower cost of our own inter-capital links. We’re also really excited to be launching services in Tasmania, with TAS-IX hopefully going live this month! We will have the official launch party on 27 March and would love to see our Members there!
We’re also planning more social and informative events over the year, which we will post as soon as the details are finalised. I’m sure you’ll find the new registration features in our portal make things a lot easier, so why not bring along a friend or work colleague? Our end of year catch ups around the country were well attended and loads of fun, and it is our Members that make them so good. Who knew darts could be so competitive and yet so enjoyable?
Of course, government regulators didn’t leave us alone over the holiday season and we responded to several calls for comment. With more raking over the Optus outage, ISP licensing reform, and scam prevention measures, we’ve certainly been busy. Next month we will be looking at the USO review, so input from Members on that topic will certainly be useful. More and more often we hear that voice is less relevant and Internet service is key, so I suspect the regulators will be looking at ways to ensure Internet service continuity, along the same way that voice was in the past, as they review the universal service obligation. We can only hope that some sense is brought into the equation.
Happy peering!
Narelle
Narelle Clark
IAA CEO
We’ve hit the ground running with our IAA Convergent Series this year. We’re already planning some great Online and In Person Events.
Save the date for the following social events!
Brisbane – TBC in March 2024
Sydney – Tuesday 2 April 2024
Melbourne – Wednesday 24 April 2024
Adelaide – Wednesday 26 of June 2024
Canberra – TBC
Perth – TBC
Look out for full details and your invitation to these events and more soon!
In the meantime, registrations are already open for our first IAA Convergent Online Panel Discussion: It’s an emergency! In a world where major downtime is inevitable, our expert panel discuss expectations versus reality with some great insights into how to manage the crisis in the moment.
Date: Tuesday 12 March 2024
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm AEDT |1:00pm – 2:30pm AWST
Venue: Via Zoom
Register via the IAA Member Portal:
By RSVPing, you are agreeing to comply with IAA’s Code of Conduct – Events.
IAASysters program is now in its fourth year! IAASysters was created in 2021 with the aim of supporting women in the Internet industry. Recent qualitative analysis found that participants felt the program helped them to grow in confidence and advance their careers.
This year, IAASysters will take place 4-6 September in Sydney. Following our usual format, the program will be offering 10 FREE spaces. Expressions of interest to apply, nominate or to be a sponsor of this year’s program can be made now via the IAA website, with applications to attend opening later this month.
Successful applicants receive:
• A one-day IAASysters Workshop (4 September 2023)
• A ticket for the AusNOG Conference with technical workshops and presentations (5-6 September 2023)
• Economy airfares to Sydney and accommodation (if required)
• One-year complimentary IAA Professional Membership (subject to Board approval)
If you would like to sponsor this year’s event, you can learn more via the IAA website:
Asia Pacific’s largest international Internet Conference is heading to Bangkok for ten full days of workshops, tutorials, networking and more. The conference runs from 21 February to 1 March, 2024.
IAA is proud to attend and support this important event, as a Diversity in Tech Sponsor. Be sure to catch up with IAA’s CEO, Narelle Clark, who will be there from 26 February to 1 March.
We hope to see you there!
Register via the APRICOT 2024 website:
The NSW-IX upgrades are complete. The 400G Arista switches are going strong, with all the final changes actioned and operational, including the migration to multiple 400G links around the city.
For those interested in the finer details, our tech team has produced some diagrams to illustrate the rollout (below). The tech team are currently working on a paper that will further explain the rationale behind this design, hopefully in time for the next newsletter.
IAA is adding Tasmania to our Internet Exchange Network, providing an important advancement in Internet connectivity and capability for the State. The IAA Tech Team will be carrying out final commissioning this month! We’re delighted to note that in anticipation of this, Cloudflare have already put in their pre-order for a port!
Connecting to TAS-IX may reduce your transit costs and improve your service performance.
To celebrate, IAA are hosting a launch event and of course, Members and your guests are invited.
Date: Wednesday, 27 March 2024
Time: 5:30pm – 9:00pm
Location: T42 Hobart | Elizabeth Street Pier
RSVP now via the IAA Member Portal and we look forward to seeing you there!
By RSVPing, you are agreeing to comply with IAA’s Code of Conduct – Events.
Join TAS-IX today!
We’re offering Members FREE 10G ports for the first 12 months at our new PoPs: DC3 and 7HOB.
Pre-order your ports via the IAA Member Portal now.
TAS-IX peering locations and details
TAS-IX will initially be offering two points of presence (PoPs), both in Hobart.
- TasmaNet DC3 data centre in Dowsing Point, Hobart.
- 7HOB, an nbn™ POI address.
Technical details
- TAS-IX will be IAA’s first exchange to use modern ethernet fabric technology: EVPN VXLAN (As opposed to VPLS) with more to come!
- Hardware: Extreme Networks X670-G2-48x-4q:
48x10G
4x40G - Core 40G path between sites with an additional link adding redundancy and capacity to 80G, based on the first year uptake.
- Route servers virtualised on VmWare ESXI hosts, Bird BGP daemon fully automated as standard.
- Protected site management via out of band hardware; ZPE Nodegrid BoldSR and GateSR. The primary path is via production network and 2 LTE connections are via Optus and Telstra as backup.
- Content caches are planned via a 40G uplink at TasmaNet DC3.
Key benefits of TAS-IX
Enhanced network performance
Enjoy high-speed data transfer, better routing control and reduced latency between connected networks. Businesses leveraging TAS-IX can expect a noticeable improvement in efficiency when sending and receiving traffic from other TAS-IX connected networks.
Cost savings
Joining our peering network may significantly reduce your reliance on costly third-party transit providers.
Improved connectivity across Tasmania
TAS-IX serves as a local hub for connectivity, fostering collaboration within the Internet community.
Virtual Leased Line (VLL) service
As a peer on our network, you may establish a dedicated high-speed, point-to-point connection with other peers, or your own network on the TAS-IX. This is called a Virtual Leased Line.
If you have any questions, please email peering@internet.com.au and we’ll be happy to assist.
To get your New Year off to a great start, IAA is bringing down the cost of our inter-capital Virtual Leased Lines (iVLL). We’ve upgraded our inter-capital network to protected, burstable 100G links. This means we can now support higher speed iVLLs and a better price.
We’re also introducing a 4-tier pricing structure that’s fairer and more cost effective for our Members, with the rate set by your total Mbps. New prices start from 40c per Mbps between key states.
Check out our latest unit prices:
The new pricing applies to all iVLL services provided from 1 March 2024. Order your iVLL services now, via the IAA Member Portal.
We look forward to an exciting and positive year of peering ahead! If you have any questions, please email peering@internet.com.au and we’ll be happy to assist.
We hope you’re enjoying the recent IAA Member Portal updates that allow you to set up and modify your services. Our testing and shadowing of requests has gone smoothly and we’ll be moving to automated deployment of changes to the network in the near future.
We’re now turning our attention to making billing easier and more streamlined for Members. We’re also working closely with our events team to revamp our events registration area of the Portal, making it easier for Members to manage their RSVPs and guest list, along with improving the notifications process.
We’re committed to continuous improvement of the Portal and look forward to bringing you even better functionality.
The end-of-year wind-down period didn’t exist for the Policy Team and the beginning of 2024 has been just as busy; IAA responded to four consultations in December, and another two in January! 2024 promises to be a hectic year as there are lots of issues that are likely to be finalised, including the Privacy Act review, SOCI rules for telcos, and the TCP Code. Currently open are the USO, BOSE Determination and Australian Cybersecurity related legislation which will keep us busy for the next couple of months.
The Department of Home Affairs have already kicked off their series of townhalls regarding the Cyber Security Legislative Reform on 30 January. These will run until end of February so register via the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Centre website, if you would like to attend future sessions.
From a global perspective, 2024 will also be a busy year in terms of Internet governance. IAA met with other stakeholders at the end of January to discuss a roadmap for the year ahead to influence global Internet governance processes.
As always, please get in touch to share any thoughts on any of the open and/or previous submissions as we really appreciate your feedback.
Completed Submissions:
Mandatory Industry Codes on Scams | Department of Treasury
Exposure Draft – ACCC Designated Complaint Function
Annual Service Improvement Plan | NBN Co
Upcoming Submissions:
Australian Cyber Security Strategy: Legislative Reforms | Department of Home Affairs | 1 March 2024
8 November 2023 was a dark day for Optus when their entire network went down leaving over 10 million customers without phone or Internet access for up to 14 hours. To list just some of the consequences, businesses lost a day’s work, simple payment transaction couldn’t be completed, the Melbourne train network came to a standstill and, perhaps most concerningly, over 2,700 triple zero calls did not go through.
And it was far from the only major Australian infrastructure or service provider to have outages or serious data breaches in 2023. Westpac online banking went down, while DP World and Medibank were hacked, just to name a few who made the headlines.
When Optus went down, there was a media frenzy. In our advocacy role, IAA were sought out for answers. Our CEO, Narelle Clark, stepped up to the task and undertook a series of interviews with outlets, including the ABC and the SMH. You can read the articles in full in the links below, but here are some of Narelle’s key points.
Systems will go down
The outage brought to light what many have seemed to forgotten; telco systems aren’t designed to be 100% fool-proof.
“We’ve generally done telecommunications so well that we as a society have come to expect that you can walk into any shop and pay with your phone. In reality, these things can and do go down periodically. There’s no silver bullet — in a hyper-connected world, services we rely on will occasionally fail. How we deal with that reality comes down to a cost equation and a risk equation,” Narelle explained.
“We will incur higher costs to deliver services at that level of reliability, if indeed that’s what we really truly want as a society.”
This is a consideration that other critical infrastructure should also factor into the design of their networks. Key infrastructure like train networks and hospitals should not be relying on only one provider in today’s age where communications is vital.
Emergency Systems
One key issue during the outage was the failed emergency calls. While it is generally expected that even emergency calls won’t work on landlines during a network outage, this is not the case for mobile. The unique nature of the Optus Outage meant that even mobile calls to triple zero failed in some instances when calls would not fail-over to another network. This is an area that is sure to result in some legislative reform. As mobile standards develop (such as 5G and beyond), we hope that the technical performance of these implementations, particularly in relation to such emergency situations, is thoroughly investigated and tested and that this is the sort of policy-work undertaken by government.
Regulation for critical infrastructure
The government facilitates ensuring critical infrastructure is as resilient as possible, via the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act (SOCI). In addition to the SOCI Act, there are security obligations for telecommunications providers under the Telecommunications Act. For example, a carrier must notify the government of changes to its networks that could compromise its security.
However, industry has long called for reform to consolidate such laws due to the complex operation of these legislation, with many arguing the obligations are overly burdensome while not equally effective. As Narelle pointed out, “Our concern with SOCI is that it imposes a whole lot of regulatory burden for very little payback. We’ve got a massive pile of paperwork to do that in reality distracts us from the actual work of securing our systems and infrastructure.”
Indeed, the Optus outage occurred amidst the various legislative frameworks. Such reform work is already underway, and we can also expect new legislation coming our way in the name of security and resilience. This includes proposals in relation to the new Australian Cybersecurity Strategy, as well as reviews being held by the Department of Communications, and a Senate Inquiry into the outage which is sure to result in some legislative changes.
It is crucial that whatever regulatory changes occur will be meaningful and practicable. They need to be technically sound to address real network vulnerabilities rather than serve as yet another check-box exercise.
There is always more to be done to protect our systems and mitigate against downtime and hacks. Lessons can and must be learned from the Optus outage, and it is unhelpful and unfair to single them out as the villain of the piece. Theirs was not the first major outage to occur in Australia and it most certainly won’t be the last.
Media commentary:
Also read IAA’s submissions regarding the Optus Network Outage to the Senate Inquiry and Department of Communications’ review:
IAA Optus Senate Inquiry response
IAA Optus Department of Communications response
Corporate Members:
INLIGO NETWORKS
Inligo Networks is an independent private subsea cable owner and operator. As they launch Internet resources both nationally and internationally, they can see the clear advantages of joining our peering network and we look forward to working with them.
LIFTUP HOSTING PTY LTD
This up and coming cloud provider is peering with IAA to expand their network’s reach. Liftup Hosting offers affordable and DDoS Protected VPS and web hosting, using fully co-located hardware. We wish them happy peering!
RESETDATA PTY LTD
With a focus on innovation and sustainability, ResetData is a cloud service provider offering high performing, cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable solutions. We are delighted to have them on board!
SECURE THE CLOUD PTY LTD
We’re pleased to welcome Secure the Cloud to both SA-IX and QLD-IX. Providing managed IT services to clients around the country, they are growing month on month. They chose to peer to better meet the demands of their customers as their business continues to expand.
Professional Members:
Jonathan Patsanas
Nicholas Healy
Alexander Anketell
Mark Smith
John Tan
