Following on from Amazon’s recent expansion across the IXes, they have now upgraded the existing 40Gbps to 100Gbps at VIC-IX. Members with services and customers using Amazon should take advantage of the additional redundancy across the exchange. The same capacity upgrade was completed in WA-IX last month.
For more information reach out to Amazon on peering-apac@amazon.com
IAA Engineers have performed an upgrade of the switch at Adelaide’s Colocity DC. The upgrade was targeted to overcome the limitation of the previous hardware and cater for more 10Gbps ports at that exchange. IAA is offering ports at SA-IX at no extra cost and are encouraging members to get connected. For more information email peering@internet.asn.au
So, you own this shiny new “peering” thing. It’s all the rage and you are awesome, but your cat videos are still being routed over those expensive transit links?! What gives!
Quite simply, IAA operates Australia’s largest multilateral peering exchanges. However, due to routing policies of some larger network operators further setup may be required on your part to ensure optimal routing and hence make full use of the exchanges. Everyone likes to manage their traffic balance to suit their own capacity and network topology: think of all those congested cats!
There are two types of IX Peering
Multilateral Peering: Each peer connects with every other peer using the route servers. With just four BGP sessions (2x IPv4 and 2x IPv6) you get full access to every other peer connected to the exchange fabric! It’s a free-for-all that works wonderfully and a simple, many-to-many arrangement to interconnect.
Bilateral Peering: This is a one-to-one peering relationship between two IX participants that allows for finer policy control, established over the IX address ranges for simplicity. In this case, each peering relationship is set up independently by the peers themselves.
As bilateral peering allows for greater traffic control, some larger members do not present themselves on the IX route servers. This means that even though you are both “connected” to the IX you will never use the IX for these connections, unless you set them up separately. Essentially, they don’t tell us about their routes so we cannot tell you. To make things even more granular, some peers only advertise a sub-set of their address space to the route servers, but they will send you a larger table if you set up bilateral peering.
“Ok, so how do we FIX it?”
The first step is to ensure you have a valid PeeringDB entry, as these larger networks use PeeringDB to build their router configuration. Updating your entry may even shave a few days off the provisioning time and some back and forth to verify details. As a side note, every request you make for bilateral sessions should include a link to your PeeringDB profile.
You will then need to locate a list of peers who are connected – but do not present on the route servers – that serve the content and networks you want! Again, a good place for this is PeeringDB for each IX (NSW-IX example: https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/716). Compare this information with the respective Looking Glass (NSW-IX example: https://lg.ix.asn.au/routeservers/rs1-nsw-v4) to verify whether a peer is sending the routes you want, or not.
A simple email to each network peering contact is generally all it takes from here. If you are feeling lucky you could deploy your router configuration whilst waiting for the other network to respond!
Some interesting networks to look for on the IX Australia exchanges:
Are you interested in finding out how your network’s broadband performance stacks up against others in the industry? Our Internet Service Provider (ISP) members are now eligible to join the ACCC’s broadband monitoring program. Some members had complained to IAA that only larger ISPs (and we know who they are) were able to participate in the program and were then using it for marketing. We’ve all seen those ‘Best ISP as Measured by the ACCC’ claims on the backs of buses and online advertising, but members complained that smaller ISPs aren’t even on the list to compare. Meaning that consumers hunting new services would only see the same old big players, and no-one else. We raised this with the ACCC and now our members are eligible to join.
The Measuring Broadband Australia (MBA) program provides information on the real-world performance of Internet plans. Its aim is to provide Australian consumers with accurate and independent information to assist their purchasing decisions. The ACCC will assist you in getting on board, and provide the measurement equipment, they just need you to assist in recruiting the measuring customers. If you can’t get enough customers to join, then you won’t be measured. Also, if you do join, your first measurement quarter will be disclosed privately so you have the opportunity to check all is correctly in place.
We invite our members to contact the ACCC directly on BroadbandPerformance@accc.gov.au to express their interest in joining the program. This is a fantastic opportunity for greater Internet performance transparency, allowing smaller ISPs to actively participate and be included in the MBA reports, and give you the opportunity to include speed and technical quality in your marketing alongside the big guys.
A year later than scheduled (thank you COVID!), on Friday 19th February the power and aircon was turned off at Perth’s QV1 SR2 room for the first and final time. A big part of our history is now retired.
After quite a few on again / off again moments, our Tech Team Leader, Nick Pratley, took advantage of the borders re-opening and jumped on a westbound plane to complete the shutdown and clean up at the QV1 datacentre.
With coffee (LOTS of coffee in fact) and a fair amount of brute force, SR2 was cleared of old servers and other networking gear, some of which found its way to new homes for a second lease on life. This means we have now consolidated our presence at the site into a single facility that is fit for purpose and vacated the repurposed storerooms and miscellaneous racking.
The work also involved moving some transit networks over to P1 and general tidy ups and rearrangements. The lights are now out, and the air con is room temperature in one of our oldest facilities.
A very BIG thank you to our many long-standing members who took the time to swing by, rehome some kit, say hello to Nick, and supply additional necessary coffee. Job done.
IAA engineers have been busy this month installing six new devices for physical lab testing and to assess different automation stacks for our upcoming portal redesign work.
Whilst currently using a single switch vendor within our peering networks, challenges with automation mean we need to look at a range of vendors including those that support open-sourced methods of automation. As such, we have put three different sets of kit into our lab so we can fully check out what we need to do to provide the solutions for our automation requirements into the future.
Each device has two ports dedicated as ‘member’ ports which go back to a dedicated NIC on a vmware cluster and through to individual VMs running various router software e.g. RouterOS.
This lab will also test the feasibility of newer layer two technologies such as VXLAN and EVPN for use across the IX, and layer three technologies such as Segment-Routing (SPRING) to improve our core network and intercapital management. Our plan is full future proofing as we grow.
Members with services and customers using Amazon should take advantage of some recent expansion and redundancy going in across IX Australia. In particular, Perth’s Amazon connections were recently expanded, so those members on WA-IX should contact Amazon to jump on board. Those members on VIC-IX should similarly bring up new sessions as there is bandwidth aplenty, and nicely reliable redundant services across the exchange. As ever PeeringDB.com has even more detail should you need it.
Get in touch with Amazon via peering-apac@amazon.com
Members and guests enjoyed a lively and informative discussion featuring experts passionate about technology, its use and regulation at the IAA 2021 Technology Outlook session this week. Many attendees were keen to see ubiquitous, high bandwidth connectivity (either 5G or Starlink) for the myriad of nanotech and microchip manufacturer-driven IoT uses, but cautioned against the lack of security and privacy by design approaches, particularly when it comes to age and cognition appropriate services.
Benefits as simple as being able to visit a public venue have been achieved over the last year with simple online technology which perhaps should have come through national solutions, with better guarantees of privacy and security. Deplatforming was also a hot issue, with the need to balance between rights and service benefits highlighted. The prospect of more regulation on infrastructure providers in order to enforce content standards was considered likely, too.
Of news to most of us was hearing that “Data is not an object of property rights”, apparently property law doesn’t actually run to “data”, so perhaps we technologists should stick to the nuts and bolts, bits and bytes of Internet service delivery. It was a great session, folks. Check out our events page if you want a re-run.
Of course, another huge thank you goes to our panellists: Professor Katina Michael, Trevor Long and Professor Lyria Bennet Moses for their tremendous insights. Once again, a rock star panel!
You may have already seen on Facebook and Twitter that from January 1st IAA has dropped the set-up fee for all 100Gbps ports, bringing them into line with our other ports. This means there are now NO set-up fees for any of IX Australia’s current range of peering ports.
To upgrade your services or purchase new ports contact our peering team on peering@internet.asn.au
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