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Propose a PoP!

Got a location in mind for a new Point of Presence (PoP)? We’re proudly carrier and data centre neutral and always open to proposals from peers, suppliers, and data centres looking to improve connectivity for the benefit of all.

IAA does, however, have a minimum design and service standard for placement of a POP. It needs to have – at minimum – high grade redundant air conditioning, dual power feeds from diverse sources, secure racks in a secure facility, structured cabling facilities and multiple fibre providers via diverse paths to the site. Basically the site needs to be rated at Tier III or above, and we need evidence of member demand for its usage. This last point means that if Members ask for it, it can be so!

Help us expand our footprint to better serve your region and the wider network community. Propose a PoP and let’s explore the possibilities together.

Propose a PoP!

Tech News – Metrics, upgrades and hardware moves: a busy few months!

From rolling out a brand-new metrics system to tackling firmware bugs and optimising hardware across the network, the past few months have been anything but quiet. We’ve been refining how we collect and display network data, upgrading devices to keep things running smoothly, and consolidating hardware to future-proof our infrastructure. Here’s a look at what’s been happening behind the scenes.

New metrics system is a work in progress (but a big step forward!)

Our old metrics system served us well for years—but let’s be honest, it wasn’t keeping up with our evolving config generation. That led to issues like peer metrics failing to index the right ports, along with some security “quirks” we won’t elaborate on.

Former Technical Team Lead Nick Pratley spearheaded a search for a better way to collect network metrics, and the result is here – check it out! 

The new stack combines SNMP Exporter (with custom enrichment via our portal), Prometheus, Victoria Metrics, and Grafana. While the system is still a work in progress, we’d love your feedback, and do let us know if you spot anything off!

For those wondering, historical metrics from the old system aren’t disappearing; we just have a few final touches to bring them into the new platform.

Side note: If you saw some wildly unstable graphs on 31/01/25 (including a rather scandalous spike to 2.59Tb/s—sadly, not real… yet), that was due to a newly added SNMP Exporter module. The way Victoria Metrics handles Prometheus scrapes caused inconsistent timestamps, which threw off rate calculations. A quick tweak (honor_timestamps) fixed it, but not before a recalibration spike. Did we mention this is still a work in progress?

Firmware upgrades: when a cold spare saves the day!

Late 2024, an Equinix PE2 device ran into trouble—its management network interface reported a ‘Tx Unit Hang’, reset itself… and then never came back. Before we could fully diagnose it with the vendor, the device went completely unresponsive—no lights, no console, nothing. Our Perth-based PHP developer Kyle stepped up and swapped in our cold spare (cheers, Kyle!), bringing everything back to normal.

Then, just before Christmas, a device at NextDC P1 rebooted unexpectedly. Given our recent failure, this was not a welcome surprise. Turns out, excessive SNMP instances triggered a bug that crashed the device. We quickly dialed back SNMP pollers, and after confirming a software fix, we rolled out a firmware upgrade across the fleet.

Alongside these upgrades, we regenerated device configs to align them with the portal. For some Members, this means previously unshaped VLL services are now correctly shaped—so if you’ve been enjoying a free ride, sorry, that’s over. A postmortem was sent out for each outage, but if you notice loss on your VLL after a firmware update, you may need to adjust your VLL speed.

Hardware consolidations: NSW-IX gets future-ready

NSW-IX has been undergoing maintenance to consolidate hardware. With our modern Arista 400Gbps devices supporting more 100G LR1 Members, we’re able to retire some older 100Gbps switches, redeploy them where they’re needed most, and still maintain 100Gbps switches for 10Gbps access ports. Bottom line: NSW-IX is well-positioned for future capacity demands, with ample 10/100/400Gbps availability.

Looking ahead, this hardware consolidation will allow for rapid deployment at potential new sites like NextDC S2 and NextDC M2. But more immediately, it enables 100Gbps Member ports at SA-IX and VDC-PER01 at WA-IX—just in time for the upcoming QV1 farewell. Bigger ports? More content distribution via AS10084? Stay tuned!

100G LR1 enabled across all 100G capable sites

We’re excited to announce that the IAA Member Portal now allows you to order 100G LR1 optical transceivers across any 100Gbps enabled site. 100GBASE-LR1 is the successor to 100GBASE-LR4 as it uses a single laser rather than four lasers to achieve 100Gbps, reducing the complexity for less failures as well as enabling cost savings.

100G LR1 is now our default preferred optic type in the portal when you order a 100Gbps service with 100G LR4 still an option for now. In addition to the benefits of 100G LR for our Members, the biggest benefit to us is that we can use a 400G PLR4 optic to break a QSFP-DD switch port out into four 100Gbps ports for Members, significantly increasing the density we can get out of our modern switches to keep your packets as close as possible to your neighbours.

To assist Members with this change, we’re currently offering a complimentary FLEXOPTIX QSFP28 LR1 transceiver with new 100Gbps ports coded for your preferred vendor. To arrange this, please email support@internet.asn.au with your order ID, shipping address and vendor details of the device the transceiver will be used in.

NEXTDC A1 – we’re here and ready to peer!

We’re proud to announce our newest Point of Presence in NEXTDC’s A1 Adelaide data centre!

IAA is committed to meeting the growing needs of our Members and going where you want to see us. With that in mind, we’re thrilled to share news of our presence in the brand-new NEXTDC A1 Adelaide facility. We’re also pleased to be offering 100Gbps ports for the first time on SA-IX.

As the State’s first Tier IV-certified colocation facility, A1 offers unmatched fault tolerance, energy efficiency, and security. We secured the first of their 1,470-rack capacity and with 5MW of IT power capacity, A1 will provide the quality connectivity and resilient infrastructure that our Members rely on.

So, of course we’re here! Our Members wouldn’t have it any other way.

Order your ports via the IAA Member Portal now:

Order ports now

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. 

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