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From the CEO’s Desk

There’s nothing like setting the dates for the end of year change freeze (22 Dec – 10 Jan) to make you sit up and notice the year is almost over! At least most of us are out of lockdown in time to do some seasonal shopping. On our shopping list is a brand new out of band network, and a few extra switches to accommodate all the member growth we keep seeing! The big Facebook outage recently demonstrated just how important your out of band access is when the network is broken, and that out of band access is vital for ensuring you can get access to sort whatever problem the network or our own humanity causes. Our existing out of band network is old and barely serviceable, so it’s definitely time for a replacement. 

Speaking of replacements, we are currently advertising for a new Policy Officer and Network Engineer, both of whom are off to new roles. If you know of anyone that might be suitable, drop us a line – they need to be totally fluent in internet acronym-speak, albeit somewhat different ones for each role, and be truly dedicated to serving our industry and making the Internet better. 

We’ll also be recruiting soon for an Advisory Council. The council will comprise members/member representatives and is to assist us in forming our positions on the various regulatory and policy issues and will meet about four times per year to give us that guidance. We’d love to hear from your policy nerds or even business people that have an interest in sensible rules within our industry. If we can pick the brains of a few of you, our submissions and representation will be even better! 

A huge congratulations to the team and to NZIX with the launch of WLG-IX. With two initial points of presence, this is a great expansion to the existing services across New Zealand. The POPs are in Xtreme and Spark’s Featherstone sites so nicely accessible to many of the Wellington service infrastructure.  

You may have noticed that auDA has finally launched the timetable for direct registrations in the .au namespace. This means you will be able to register your own domain names as a second level domain directly under .au. If you already have some_example.com.au then you will have priority in getting some_example.au as long as no-one else has some_example.org.au etc. Most countries have direct registrations already and it didn’t break their internet when it was introduced, but members should be aware that this change is coming, and it might mean extra effort in your DNS or customer support. Or you might want to try a whole new marketing approach with your shiny new short url. Check the auDA website for the full rules and the timetable. 

Last but not least, I must extend my thanks to member Ciphertel for stepping into the breach when we couldn’t get to QV1 for the power outage this month. It is brilliant to see the value our members bring. I just hope the coffee in the new café is good enough to justify the hassle. 

As ever – please feel free to get in touch to give me your views on any of the topics in this month’s newsletter. 

Narelle Clark  

Recent Submission

IAA submitted to Home Affairs Strengthening Australia’s cyber security regulations and incentives paper. In our submission, we highlighted the complexity of existing cybersecurity legislation, especially for smaller ISPs to navigate. We commented on suggested mechanisms which could promote the uptake of cybersecurity, including minimum standards for personal information and health checks for small businesses. We called on Home Affairs to collaboratively engage with relevant industry stakeholders throughout the process of drafting cybersecurity regulation or processes.

IAA supported the extension of the Wholesale ADSL to 20 June 2024 in our recent submission to the ACCC. We raised the point that WADSL as continues to be prominent in rural, regional and remote areas, it needs to be provisioned for.

We also expressed our perspective on ACMA’s Statement of Expectations (SoE) for the Telecommunications Industry with regards to vulnerable consumers. We extended our support to the SoE, however, highlighted that for smaller ISPs, some objectives and examples regarding financial hardship and customer service would be difficult to meet because of resource constraints.

The ACCC published updated Non-Discrimination Guidelines for the telecommunications sector, a process we responded to in June. In the new Guidelines, the ACCC will assess whether NBN Co or access providers have acted in a discriminatory manner by conducting an explicit or implicit discrimination test. A quick summary of how this process will work is available here.

 

CLG transition update

The transition to a company limited by guarantee continues as we patiently wait to hear back from ASIC to register under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) with deregistration from the Associations Incorporation Act 2015 (WA) complete.   

With lockdowns and now even the earthquake, paperwork processing at ASIC has been delayed. Members should rest assured that we will call the AGM as soon as we hear from ASIC!  

We would like to extend our gratitude to members who participated in the workshops and consultations and voted on the transition. As a member-run association, your input is invaluable.   

BDX8 removal – Melbourne

At long last we have migrated off the BDX8. When Covid prevented the road trip to Melbourne the team had planned, it was down to crossing our fingers and hoping Delta could be stopped. After 6? 8? 10? weeks of lockdown and countless error messages, the decision was made to pull the proverbial plug, and engage remote hands.  

Aaron has apparently compiled the best set of work instructions ever, and our remote smart hands followed the bouncing ball all the way through to the end. The BDX8 is no longer at the heart of VIC-IX; however, it continues to have three 1Gbps users.   

A special thanks to Aaron for a great job, our remote hands for your assistance over the distance, Nick for the late-night supervision, and to Washif for the checking.  

Brilliant effort, team. A huge well done. 

Netflix becomes opt-in

This morning, members received an email regarding a configuration issue with Netflix caches. The issue was recently identified and has since been resolved. As a result, members will need to complete the following process to access these caches: 

1. Create an AS-SET that lists your residential customers or provide the information to our team. 

2. Tag BGP advertisements to route-servers with the following communities, based on peering location. 

  • 10084:2504 WA OCA Opt-In 
  • 10084:2514 VIC OCA Opt-In 
  • 10084:2524 QLD OCA Opt-In 
  • 10084:2544 NSW OCA Opt-In 
  • 10084:2534 SA OCA Opt-In 

If you require any further information or assistance, please do not hesitate to contact our team at support@internet.asn.au or call us on 1300 793 320. 

From the CEO’s Desk

Well, here we are almost into the last quarter of the year. This last month has been another productive one, with the old BDX8 Extreme (aka ‘Black Diamond’) replaced in VIC-IX and the team are close to declaring the new WLG-IX across the ditch ready for service. The team have also redesigned and updated our out-of-band network and commenced the rebuild. 

Normally by now we would also have announced our AGM date, however this year we are working to manage a seamless transition to a company limited by guarantee. With lockdowns, postal delays and now even the earthquake, paperwork processing at ASIC has been delayed. Members should rest assured that we will call the AGM as soon as we hear from ASIC! Regardless of this, we will publish the annual report and annual financials ahead of the meeting as they are close to final now. 

Our policy effort is also very much head down, tail up, too. The NBN SAU and defamation reform work is progressing, and we’ve made a few submissions. The eSafety Commission has now set out with a bit more clarity how it wants the new Codes to work to ensure the industry minimises the risk the public is exposed to the most serious categories of material by July 2022. It seems they are expecting to see file scanning on internet-based storage services for known serious content. 

From the CEO’s Desk

There are clearly a lot of people stuck at home on the internet right now and this is being reflected across our traffic statistics, with us hitting all time highs. We are hitting higher rates across NSW-IX to the point we will be looking to do a nice big upgrade as soon as we can, as well as finally upgrade our core switch in Melbourne. Recent firmware upgrades in other states mean that 100Gbps ports are available everywhere and these are being consumed with gusto! It’s also interesting to see the blips due to our various leaders and their daily covid updates, with New Zealand’s Prime Minister shifting the dial more than our state Premiers or Prime Minister. It’s fair to say that the Kiwi migration of broadcast television onto their fixed broadband network probably plays a significant part, but it sure is interesting to see these social factors being played out on our networks.

I must admit that looking at our traffic graphs is far more interesting than economic models of NBN Co’s business, but this area is a key part of our advocacy right now. The ACCC is reviewing the standard access undertaking leading to a potentially all new pricing regime for the NBN. As we delve further into the detail on this, we will hopefully draw comparisons with other industries to see how regulation has affected the various wholesale markets. Again, if any IAA members have a view on this process, please let me know.

Last month also had me doing a couple of deep dive presentations – one for staff in the Department of Communications (How the Internet Works) and the other jointly with the ACS (The Internet 2021 and Beyond). I realised just how much I’ve been missing those regular industry catch ups at conferences and the like where everything internet is debated, as it seemed a lot harder this time round to pull together observations on where we’re at with internet technology and regulation. If anyone has any new networks they want to show off or neat software solutions to networking problems perhaps it is time for you to propose a topic for our next event!

Record Numbers for Both IAA and NZIX

During the month of August, both IAA and New Zealand Internet Exchange (NZIX) hit new records across their exchanges. With half of Australia in lockdown, we hit a new record of 790Gbps over the weekend ending Sunday, August 22, 2021, breaking our previous record of 750Gbps.

In comparison, as lockdown commenced across the ditch, so too did the spikes in traffic across AKL-IX and CHC-IX, with Auckland reaching an all-time high of 341Gbps with plenty of room to spare. The peaks continued across the remainder of the week finishing off with a Friday afternoon high of 335Gbps.

Primus DC – September Closure

Primus DC, located at 55 King Street, Melbourne, is closing, and we have been advised that we need to vacate the premises by 30 September 2021. Unfortunately, this means members with ports within the data centre will be affected as we will no longer be offering services from this facility after that date.

Rest assured that we are working hard to ensure service continuity despite the closure and request that members with a current service at 55 King Street migrate to any of our other sites on VIC-IX. All location options can be found on our website. Hopefully, you’ve already seen the relocation of the route server from that site, and a shorter ring transit time with our rearrangements already completed.

If you require any further information or assistance with your migration, please get in touch at peering@internet.asn.au Time is running out!