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From the CEO’s desk – November 2025

Well, the big news from the last quarter was the ACMA’s rejection of the Telecommunications Consumer Protections (TCP) Code, after an intensely negative campaign from consumer groups. The revised TCP Code had incorporated a significant number of changes, however the submitted version was deemed insufficient protection, and we now seem to be on a headlong path to direct regulation. Frankly, I have my doubts that the requested changes are what actual consumers genuinely want: how many consumers are keen to undergo a credit check, with all the privacy implications for a debt of a mere $300? How many want to see the inevitable price rises that come with an increase in regulatory compliance? How many want to receive a string of messages regarding their bills?

There is also increased pressure to frame the TCP Code using terms to reflect telecommunications being ‘essential’ when there is presently no agreed – or even proposed – definition of what essential means in the context of telecommunications. Is it truly essential to be able to stream any film to every location you might conceivably be in on every handset you could possibly choose? Or are there more rational measures that properly facilitate emergency communications? Is simply enabling services at a community level via libraries, schools, and other facilities enough? This debate has barely started, let alone concluded who will ultimately pay for it.

In the meantime, we’ve also held our AGM, attended a range of other events, and held our IAASysters program again. I hope you’ve all had a chance to read our annual report and marked all the great achievements of the IAA Team. Once again, I also look forward to catching up with as many of you as possible at the end of year events.

Congratulations are also in order to the winning Directors in the face of such great candidates in the election, and many thanks to those who weren’t successful, but offered their time to the Association. Thank you also to those who participated in the AGM and cast their votes in the election.

Happy peering!

Narelle

Question from the desk

Each newsletter, I will pose a question to Members, because your perspective is important. Please email me with your thoughts and opinions. Over to you:

How do you think we should measure the delivery of internet access if it is declared ‘essential’?

Click here

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IAA Annual General Meeting 2025 recap

The AGM provided an overview of another solid year for the Association. One focused on stability, strong financial performance, and continued growth in our network capacity and services.

Members heard reports from Chair Matthew Enger and CEO Narelle Clark, reflecting on milestones including:

  • Continued expansion of 100G capability across SA-IX and WA-IX
  • Successful rollout of new Member Portal features, including billing automation
  • Ongoing advocacy on critical infrastructure and consumer protection regulation
  • Celebrating 30 Years of Peers and a record year of engagement across our events and IAASysters programs

A resolution was passed confirming Crunch Auditing as auditors for FY25-26.

Board election

The following candidates were nominated for election to the IAA Board:

  • Nathan Brookfield
  • Paul Day
  • Matthew Enger
  • Emma Mondy
  • Aftab Siddiqui
  • Karla Stokes
  • Diego Torre

You’ll find more details on the newly elected Board Members in this item.

Finally, thank you to David Hooton

This year we also farewelled David Hooton, who joined the IAA Board in 2017 and served as Chair from 2018 to 2021.

David’s experience with internet exchanges abroad and his commitment to mentoring both Board and staff have left a lasting mark on the Association. His steady leadership helped guide IAA through its transition from WAIA to a truly national body.

We extend our sincere thanks for his years of dedication and service.

Didn’t make it or want to go over the finer details again?

The AGM 2025 is now uploaded onto our YouTube channel and you can find a copy of our Annual Report on the IAA website.

Watch again!

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Congratulations to our newly elected Board Members

Following this year’s election, we’re pleased to congratulate our newly elected Directors who will help guide IAA’s direction for 2026 and beyond.

Re-elected for a three-year term:
Matthew Enger – Professional Member, CEO of Leaptel
Now heading into his sixth year on the IAA Board, Matthew continues to champion efficiency, transparency, and the voice of smaller providers in an increasingly complex regulatory environment. With extensive experience leading a growing RSP, he brings both technical and commercial insight to ensure IAA remains responsive to Members’ needs and focused on strengthening Australia’s internet infrastructure.

Nathan Brookfield – Professional Member, Managing Director of Managed Networks
Nathan returns to the Board with nearly two decades of industry experience spanning data centre operations, network design, and ISP management. Having first served on the Board back 2015, he remains committed to strong governance, sustainable growth, and advocacy on behalf of Members across the internet and telecommunications sector.

Elected to fill a one-year casual vacancy:
Karla Stokes – Professional Member
Karla joins the Board with over 20 years of leadership experience across technology, infrastructure, and industry advocacy. A long-time supporter of the IAASysters program, she brings deep expertise in registry operations, member engagement, and digital policy development from her time at APNIC and PPCA. Karla’s inclusive leadership and strategic perspective will be a valuable addition to IAA’s ongoing work supporting diversity and innovation across the industry.

Following on from the success of last year’s IAASysters Board Mentorship, we’re pleased to introduce this year’s mentee, Fiona Atkinson. Fiona is a Network Planner at Sony Interactive Entertainment, bringing experience in peering, capacity planning, and network procurement across fibre, internet exchanges, and co-location services. Under the guidance of IAA Board Chair Matthew Enger, she will spend the next year gaining hands-on experience in board governance, strategic decision-making, and leadership within Australia’s internet industry.

We’d also like to thank last year’s mentee, Emma Mondy, for her outstanding contribution to the program and to the Board during her time filling a casual vacancy. Her commitment and insight helped set a strong foundation for future participants.

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IAA’s end-of-year embargo 2026

As we head towards the close of the year, we’d like to take this opportunity to give notice of our holiday shut-down period.

To ensure any new services, moves or changes are processed before the end of the year, please submit them by COB Friday, 12 December 2025.

Any requests received after this date will be actioned after our end-of-year embargo, which runs from COB Friday, 19 December 2025, to Sunday, 4 January 2026. During this period, our team will only be available to assist with urgent support issues.

For further information or queries regarding the network embargo period, please get in touch at support@internet.asn.au.

Wishing you a happy and restful holiday season from the whole IAA Team!

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When a malformed BGP update made things interesting

On 8 October, we received alerts of IPv6 peers flapping toward several route servers across both IAA and NZIX. Investigation revealed that peers were receiving a malformed BGP update, isolated to our route server BGP daemon software (Bird v2.0.7). The issue stemmed from Bird propagating an attribute it didn’t support, and it wasn’t just us. Other exchanges including JINX, DINX, CINX, THINX, MegaIXs, LONAP, GetaFIX, PIT-IX, and later EdgeIX were affected too.

The culprit? The way RFC 7606 handles unknown attributes (ironic right?), is to set the transitive bit on a BGP attribute if it’s unknown. Our friends at BGP Tools provided an excellent breakdown of how this can occur:

“If a BGP implementation does not understand an attribute, and the transitive bit is set, it will copy it to another router.“

Source: Benjojo’s Blog – BGP Path Attributes and Grave Error Handling

The issue was initially filtered upstream by the offending peer, which stopped the immediate problem. However, since we remained vulnerable to a recurrence, we rolled out the latest Bird code to our lab environment. Compatibility testing with our route server config generator (arouteserver) showed no issues, so we scheduled maintenance windows with provisions to escalate to emergency maintenance if the fault reappeared.

Upgrades went live on Route Server 2 for IAA on 20 October and NZIX on 23 October. And sure enough, on the same day the issue re-emerged across exchanges, prompting an emergency upgrade of Route Server 1. We’re now running Bird 2.17.2, which includes support for RFC 9234, allowing it to drop a malformed Only-to-Customer (OTC) attribute instead of propagating it.

It’s difficult to confirm whether the problem originated from Bird taking a 4-byte field and malforming it to 1024 bytes.  On-the-wire data suggests it remained a 4-byte update, but for stability’s sake, IAA will review alternative BGP software stacks for route servers to reduce any single-point dependency on the Bird BGP stack.

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