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Tech News – August 2024

100G-LR optics offer for NSW-IX Members

We’re pleased to introduce single-lambda 100G-LR interfaces in select NSW-IX points of presence. This upgrade offers our Members a cost-optimised solution for 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) connectivity.

Here’s what you can expect:

Simplified Design, Lower Cost: 100G-LR uses a single-wavelength architecture, eliminating the need for complex and expensive optical designs found in older 100GbE technologies. This translates to a substantially lower total cost for transceivers.

Seamless Integration: Fully compatible with a wide range of routers and switches equipped with QSFP28 electrical interfaces, 100G-LR allows for easier network upgrades without significant hardware changes.

Future-Proofing for your Network: As demand for 100GbE grows, 100G-LR provides a scalable and efficient solution to meet your evolving bandwidth needs.

If you’re interested and connected to the NSW-IX contact support@internet.asn.au.

Compute stack renewal

After thoroughly evaluating virtualisation solutions, our tech team has successfully migrated our virtual machine (VM) infrastructure to a Proxmox virtual environment. Transitioning to the advanced open-source virtualisation platform demonstrates IAA’s commitment to reliable, efficient, and scalable services for our Members. Of course the price comparison between VMWare and an open source solution was pretty favourable too!

Here are the key benefits of Proxmox for Members:

  • High availability and minimal downtime.
  • Greater efficiency, as it’s easier for our engineering teams to provision, monitor and maintain VMs.
  • Scalability of our virtual infrastructure to meet Members’ growing demands.
  • Customisation to meet specific needs with access to the latest features and security enhancements for future-proofing.

Our tech team will continue to innovate and enhance our services to provide you with the best experience possible. Of course, Nick also enjoyed taking the system apart and rebuilding it afresh!

Equinix SY3 - extreme makeover edition

Confession time! IAA had a dirty little secret: Equinix SY3. A tangled mess of cross connects well over 10 years old. As you can see in the before photo from 2020 there was an ugly number of low-density SC panels, as well as an old Cisco 2901 used for OOB purposes. The pièce de résistance was the stacked Extreme x670s, prone to crashing spectacularly (see the notorious Incident Report of 25 February 2021), which subsequently led to the stack’s removal (as detailed in this Scheduled Maintenance Report).

Then, this year, our intrepid tech engineers (namely Aaron) embarked on an ambitious mission to clean up the rack. They boldly removed the final x670, deftly mass-migrated peers off that box, and permanently deleted the SC panels! The rack has now been tamed!

As the connoisseurs amongst us will attest, there is still a bit of work to do to achieve perfect cabling order, such as better cable bars, proper cable lengths, replacing the 100G CR4s with LR1s or CWDM4s, and moving the higher-density LC panels further up. Regardless, we’re proud to declare that the rack is ready to welcome a shiny new Arista to our 800Gbps core.

Mission accomplished!

IAA Member Portal News – August 2024

We are excited to announce the latest updates to the Member Portal:

Streamlined Payment Flow: The payment process has been completely overhauled to make adding payment methods and paying invoices more accessible and convenient.

Pre-order Ports: The membership application form has been updated to allow Members to pre-order ports when onboarding as a member.

Improved Functionality: We continue to enhance the Portal’s functionality with the main achievement being we’ve added Arista configuration support to our existing network automation system. This enables network automation on the new Arista switches and 400Gbps ports.

We remain committed to providing our Members with the best possible experience and welcome your feedback on these new features.

VDC-MEL03 with 40/100G ports

Tech news: New 40/100G service points delivered to VIC-IX

The mighty Tech Team have been very busy and are pleased to announce the Phase 1 of the rack migration at VDC-MEL03 is now complete. 40/100G ports are now available to all members on level 3. Make sure you get your orders in via the IAA Portal!

Our cable up to MDC/5GN on level 15 is currently being re-terminated from our previous rack in the OFDF to now be direct to our rack, which should be completed within a few weeks. We will soon be able to deliver 40/100G service ports to MDC/5GN members via level 15. Regardless of where you are at 530 Collins St, feel free to place your order now!

As a result of this hardware being installed, we were able to upgrade our VIC-IX ring to fully redundant 200G paths giving us up to 400Gbps usable out of each site, and at the same time reducing OPEX by choosing 100G BiDi transceivers to get the most out of a pair of fibre.

This hardware will also permit us to finally progress further on updating our layer 2 fabric technology choice. Watch this space for more updates!

SA-IX milestone

This month marked 10 years since IAA announced the launch of a peering point in South Australia, heralding the further expansion of our IX-Australia peering network. 

SA-IX’s 10th birthday was officially celebrated on Monday 27 February. Here’s to another 10 years – and hopefully many, many more! 

APNIC Executive Council election – your vote is valuable

Voting is now open for the APNIC Executive Council (EC) election. If you are a member of APNIC, IAA strongly encourages you to vote.   

APNIC is the organisation responsible for the distribution and management of IP addresses and AS numbers in the Asia-Pacific region. The APNIC EC is responsible for the management of APNIC’s activities and functions, including its strategic direction and budget on behalf of APNIC members. The constitution of the EC can have a great impact on the Internet landscape and community in Australia, and more globally. IAA is firmly committed to stability and reliability in the management of Internet resources and considers the continuing good governance of APNIC to be essential to this cause.  

As it’s a member-driven organisation, it is important that you use your vote, and do so wisely to ensure a well-rounded and appropriate EC.  

We strongly encourage you to:  

  • carefully consider the candidates  
  • ensure the candidate you vote for appropriately represents the Internet community and works in the best interest of the Internet. 

Voting closes 14:30 AWST (UTC +8) Thursday 2 March 2023. 

Further information on the nominees and processes can be found on the APNIC nominations page. 

Important update to AWS peers on NSW-IX

Amazon Web Services (AWS) ASN 16509 peering on NSW-IX has recently advised our technical team of a typo in their LAG IPv6 address. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a large number of NSW-IX members peering with an incorrect IPv6 address.

To rectify this issue, AWS has requested that all peers check and reconfigure the address if required. Please see the information below:

Incorrect: IPv4 218.100.52.9. IPv6 2001:7fa:11:4:0:470d:0:1
Correct: IPv4 218.100.52.9. IPv6 2001:7fa:11:4:0:407d:0:1

If you would like any further information regarding this matter, please get in contact with AWS via peering-apac@amazon.com

Farewell, Adam Data Centre SA

As part of our continuous site evaluation and optimisation, IAA has taken the decision to cease SA-IX services from ADAM DC in South Australia. While we are sad to see any site go, with multi-year stagnant growth and improvements to core paths and costs increasing significantly, it is definitely time to bid this one farewell. We would like to assure members that we have consulted with the members at the site, as well as others and our Board, and are giving the longest notice possible to all affected members.

Adam DC’s final service date is Monday 31 July. After this date, our hardware will be powered down and IX Australia services delivered via this site will be decommissioned. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this decision, but rest assured IAA is committed to providing excellent service via SA-IX into the future.

Members who wish to retain their services can migrate their connection to another SA-IX point of presence. Available locations are:

  • Colocity DC3 – 172 Morphett Street ADELAIDE
  • Vocus DC – Level 1, 132 Franklin St ADELAIDE
  • YourDC Edinburgh Parks – 23–27 Woomera Ave EDINBURGH
  • YourDC Hawthorn – 60 Belair Rd HAWTHORN

To proceed with the migration of your services, please login to the IAA member portal and submit a port order for any other location you prefer, and we will work with you to migrate your services. If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact the team on peering@internet.asn.au or call us on 1300 653 132.

End-of-year embargo period

Members, please remember our end-of-year embargo period is nearing. It runs from Friday 23 December 2022 to Sunday 8 January 2023 (inclusive). During this time we will not be provisioning any new services or changing existing services. Rest assured, support staff will be on call if any urgent issues or network emergencies arise. Any orders or change requests need to be submitted by Friday 9 December 2022.

graph of IAA IXP traffic

NSW-IX reached a traffic milestone!

We achieved an aggregate peak data flow of over 500 Gbps across NSW-IX. This occurred on Wednesday 16 November when Call of Duty: Warzone 2 was released on Steam – the game data was served to members from our Steam content caches.  

IAA has never had that much traffic across NSW-IX (or indeed any single IX) in our history. Not bad for our second-youngest IX, which is already our largest by data volume. 

It’s great news for members as it’s further evidence that getting data via settlement-free peering means a massive reduction in expenditure on internet-transit costs.

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