What a fantastic way to celebrate 2022 with our Perth-based members. Cruising the beautiful Swan River aboard the MV River Bells.
Date: Tuesday, 29 November 2022
Time: 5:45pm AWST – boarding commences, 6:00pm – 9:00pm AWST – Cruise
Location: MV River Bells | Depart from and return to Barrack Street Jetty, Elizabeth Quay, Barrack Street and Riverside Drive, Perth, WA, 6000
What a great way to celebrate 2022 with an evening of good food, drinks and socialising with members on the alfresco of the Pig ‘N’ Whistle Riverside.
Date: Wednesday, 14 December 2022
Time: 5:30pm – 8:30pm AEST
Location: Pig ‘N’ Whistle Riverside | Riverside Centre, 123 Eagle Street, Brisbane, QLD 4001
The Internet Association of Australia (IAA), the operator of IX Australia, has announced today plans to upgrade its NSW internet exchange point NSW-IX to a 400Gbps core using Arista switching equipment.
Like most internet platforms, the pandemic has seen IAA’s NSW-IX doubling its traffic levels over the last two years. IAA has determined that in order to continue to ensure its high level of availability and congestion-free operation, the core of the internet exchange point will move to dual 400Gbps paths and be the first internet exchange in Australia to announce ground breaking 400Gbps technology.
“Simply throwing more 100Gbps links is no longer economic as you burn more ports in inter-site links and redundancy than is fair to member services”, Chief Executive Officer, Narelle Clark said today. “Members are what make internet exchange points the compelling infrastructure and interconnection solution they are, and we would rather ensure member traffic flows efficiently and reliably.” The new switches will also enable IAA’s content network and direct Cloud connections to deliver even faster than they do today.
“We are pleased to have been selected by the Internet Association of Australia as their key technology platform for 400Gbps as they upgrade their New South Wales Internet Exchange. IAA and Arista share a common vision on ultra-high performance, flexibility, and mission critical reliability in the Internet Exchange environment in Australia,” said Garry Turner, Arista Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand.
The NSW-IX will be the first of IAA’s six Australian internet exchange points to upgrade to 400Gbps and comprises nine Sydney based points of presence connected in a fully redundant, diverse fibre ring. These new switches will be deployed to consolidate the core and increase overall capacity, with the option to offer 400Gbps ports to members directly.
The IAA internet exchange point system is currently peaking in aggregate at over 900Gbps across Australia, and the NSW-IX carries much of this traffic, routinely peaking over 400Gbps today. Arista was chosen after comprehensive interoperability and protocol performance testing with the IAA team undertaking a thorough bench testing program over several months.
Media Contact:
Narelle Clark
CEO
Ph: +61 412 297 043 / 0412 297 043
ceo@internet.asn.au
After all the effort the team has put in, we are just bursting to launch our new portal. As with any software project, there is more we want to do, but the critical piece has just been to turn it into a robust system on a platform that is modular, extensible and – yes – one we can support into the future. The old one really has had its day, so we’re really looking forward to pulling the proverbial plug on it! Nick and Kyle have really put their hearts and souls into this, and the rest of the team, led by Tanz, have had us all (and I mean all!) grinding our way through relentless interface and system testing. While I’m sure something is bound to surprise us, we are very confident that the system will be ready for our September soft launch date and comms have just gone out to that effect. I’m sure you’ll all love the fresh new look, conveniently located useful tools, and a few long-needed features. All we ask is that you please be patient as we bed it down, and you get used to things being in different places. All feedback is genuinely welcome, and we are also putting in place a solid feature request system that will allow both the users and the IAA team to prioritise updates and changes.
I’m also pleased to announce we’re taking the plunge to 400Gbps ethernet switching. That’s another massive achievement from the team: completing exhaustive interoperability testing with our existing platform, configuring, misconfiguring and generally trying hard to push things to their limits! Of course, the current supply chain joys mean those of you desperate to cut over to 400Gbps interconnects with your nearest IX will have to wait a month or few, but rest assured our congestion management practices are strong and as soon as we can pop the new core into place, we will. In the mean time we’ll keep adding 100G links… and NSW-IX will be the first. We’ve chosen Arista as it offered the best performance of all the vendors we tested, with all the right acronyms in all the right places, frames and packets in order, yes sirree!
And that was the month, really… well actually, no. The tech team made the news with a case study published by one of our vendors – apparently we aren’t the only ones proud of such a neat design! We had a great online event on the topic of lawful interception, and even had a last-minute panellist join from one of the Agencies. We spent two days locked in a room reviewing the latest NBN Special Access Undertaking proposal, and we’re very keen to hear member thoughts on that topic. Amongst others, we’ve also dashed off another submission to Treasury who want to massively increase the fines (up to 30% of revenue) for telcos acting anti-competitively, noting the ridiculously short consultation window and that these fines could also apply more broadly under the Australian Consumer Law. Just what we need, eh?
I’d also like to extend a big thank you to Spectrum Networks for giving us the extra space we needed in Sydney’s Global Switch. While now at an end, we do appreciate the hospitality we’ve had for what must be nearly a decade of service. Members are the life blood of our organisation, and those that act generously in the spirit of industry co-operation allow us to expand cost effectively, or test out new sites for viability without burning the budget. You really are the gems that make our industry sparkle! IAA operates on a blend of commercial and donated services, all in the spirit of making the Internet better, and we are all better for it. Thanks again, Spectrum Networks!
See you all at AusNOG folks, and don’t forget to say ‘Hi!’ to our latest IAA Systers.
Narelle
Some of you may remember from our newsletter articles and social media posts that we worked with ZPE to upgrade our Out of Band network (OOB), by installing 35 Nodegrid Gate Services Routers and two Net Service Routers. ZPE wrote a case study on our OOB project: Reliable Internet Exchange Infrastructure: Building a Sustainable IXP Network for the Internet Association of Australia and an accompanying blog post, which are both now available to read.
The upgrade of the OOB came as our existing hardware reached end of life, and we required a new system that could give us true lights-out management and enable us to keep our infrastructure reachable and under control when the inevitable bad things happen.
Like any OOB network, the new system enables remote upgrades to network switches and servers, with the ability to remotely recover from failed upgrades, configuration problems and human error; this one has just a few extras, such as a good tool set for local packet capture and troubleshooting. With dual SIM cards on board and some other wired access, we should be reachable in the darkest of moments. The easy set-up meant Aaron had it all done and dusted across all of our sites in record time, too! It’s another job well done.
The Public Policy team has continued to be busy this past month. From participating in a panel on Lawful Interception to attending an industry forum on the revised Special Access Undertaking from NBN Co, while also keeping on top of the various consultations that are currently underway.
Shortly after the IAA event regarding Open LI, which included the IAA Policy Officer’s brief introduction to Australian lawful interception obligations, there have been some changes made, meaning the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act will now be overseen by the Attorney-General’s Department. The Department of Home Affairs will now only oversee the use of interception powers by ASIO.
The Department of Home Affairs has been asked by the new Labor government to revisit the 2020 Cyber Security Strategy in the context of the contemporary growing threat landscape. One of the criticisms of the previous strategy was that it failed to take on industry recommendations and lacked wider industry collaboration, and this is said to be a focus of the revamped approach. A timeline for the update has not yet been announced, but we look forward to participating in the consultations once they begin, as developments in cyber security and critical infrastructure have increasingly been focused on the telecommunications sector.
The Minister for Home Affairs also recently designated 82 of the nation’s most critical infrastructure assets as ‘systems of national significance’ (SONS), activating powers that were granted to the Minister under recent critical infrastructure legislation. The designated assets, including some from the communications sector, may now be subject to heavier obligations. Under law, these assets also cannot be publicly named as being a SONS.
On that note about critical infrastructure, remember that as a carrier or CSP, you will need to report operational information to the Register of Critical Infrastructure by 7 October 2022!
Check out our work from the past month as well as responses we are working on for the month(s) ahead.
The Treasury has fast-tracked draft amendment to legislation that would see greater penalties for telecommunications providers who engage in anti-competitive conduct. Increased penalties could be as high as 30% of a telco’s revenue, and the maximum penalty amount could rise from $10 million to $50 million. The explanatory note claims the increases are to ensure they are a sufficient deterrent to larger telco providers.
In our response, IAA supported the commitment to ensuring providers do not engage in behaviour that is anti-competitive, but raised our concerns with the extremely short notice and consultation period (only 1 week!), as well as the lack of explanatory justification provided for an amendment of this scale.
Revised NBN Co SAU Variation | NBN Co | 2 September 2022
Following its withdrawal of the Special Access Undertaking Variation proposal in July, NBN Co has released its revised SAU and is seeking feedback. Many changes have been made, such as to pricing structure, service standards and the ACCC’s powers, reflecting feedback on its previous proposal and the last SAU. The ACCC also held a two-day industry forum which IAA attended, and the team is committed to continuing to engage in this area of importance to our members.
Stage 2 Review of the Model Defamation Provisions | COAG | 9 September 2022
This stage of the review of the Model Defamation Provisions will focus on Internet intermediaries and what level of liability intermediaries should have for third-party publication of defamatory material online. A workshop will be held in early September by the NSW Department of Communities and Justice which is coordinating the consultation. We will continue our strong advocacy that ISPs providing vanilla internet access should not be liable for defamation by users.
5-year Productivity Inquiry: Australia’s Data and Digital Dividend | Productivity Commission | 7 October 2022
The second interim report for the Productivity Inquiry has been released, focusing on data and the digital economy in Australia. The Commission has made various recommendations, including changes to the government’s funding allocations for telecommunications services, such as those within the Universal Service Obligation and Mobile Black Spot funding.
We are in the process of activating a new Google Private Network Interconnect (PNI) in Melbourne. Activating the PNI will allow us to fill our Google caches from Google’s cloud location in Melbourne rather than carrying it all the way from Sydney. Our Google caches in Melbourne ingest as much as 5 Gbps of fill data during peak periods, so being able to source this data directly from Google’s cloud location in Melbourne will help significantly in ensuring our resources are used as efficiently as possible.
With a planned route server refresh to keep up with the growing traffic across our network, we’re happy to report that we’ve just received some of our new hardware. Plans are now underway to run up and deploy them across each IX. Stay tuned for further updates in our newsletter and on our social media channels.
Due to the growing demand for network capacity, we’re in the process of procuring hardware and planning the implementation of a 400Gbps backbone ring across Sydney. Backed by the Arista 7280DR3 series platform, this expanded backbone will ensure that our network has capacity to meet existing and future demand for our services across NSW-IX.
The 7280DR3 is part of the Arista 7000 Series that are purpose built for 25G, 100G and 400G systems and are designed to be of the highest performance environments. With 9.6Tbps wire speed performance and 16GB buffer, this piece of hardware supports 24 x 400G OSFP-DD or up to 96 x 100G.
