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The IAA Board met for its Planning Day on 13 November 2024 – it was a packed day of valuable discussions with productive outcomes!
The Planning Day began with an induction session including training on Board and Director responsibilities. The insightful presentation from the Associations Forum set a great tone that stressed the crucial strategic role that the Board plays for the Association, especially as we welcomed two new faces to the IAA Board in 2024.
Next, the Board considered the Association’s objectives, noting that any amendments can only be made with a special resolution passed by a 75% majority of votes cast by Members. The Board agreed that the Association’s objects were still relevant and appropriate, alongside the Association’s tagline, ‘infrastructure for the common good’.
With the IAA 3-Year Strategic Plan having only recently come into place, the Board didn’t conduct a full review, and the Planning Day was instead positioned to be a light touch review and check-in on the ‘Objectives and Key Results’ for 2024-25. This still involved deep dives into each of the Association’s key pillars, with spirited discussions focusing on Membership, Tech and Peering, Marketing and Public Policy.
Membership
The Association’s Management Accountant presented membership numbers, revenue, benefits and objectives to help guide the Board’s discussion on how to grow the Association’s membership. As part of these considerations, the Board established a subcommittee to investigate training issues for Members. We will keep Members updated as this work progresses.
Tech and Peering
Our new Tech Lead provided an update on the Association’s current architecture evolution and planning for switch deployment. The Board agreed to a switch replacement plan to ensure redundancy, proper asset management, and standardisation of LR1 optical connection.
Marketing
The CEO presented strategies to increase take-up of the Association’s services and grow membership. Members will be happy to note that, once again, we will not be raising prices. The Board then endorsed a new 12-month discount on 10Gbps ports for new Members, so feel free to spread the news and encourage peers to join!
Public Policy
On the public policy front, the Board reviewed the Association’s Public Policy Principles, deciding they are still appropriate. As is our current approach to advocacy – representing members in relevant regulatory reform consultations. Led by the Association’s Policy Officer, the Board also considered ways to grow Members’ engagement with the Association’s advocacy work. It was decided that the Association will present more regular regulatory updates alongside our events, so that Members can look forward to those in the coming months. The team will also look at creating a new ‘regulatory’ role within the Portal, so watch out for that too!
All in all, the Board found it to be a very productive day and we’re confident in the future of the Association to ‘operate for the benefit of the internet, and the people who build and operate it’!
This year marks a major milestone for the Internet Association of Australia (IAA): our 30th anniversary! To celebrate, we’re taking the party on the road to make 2025 a year to remember!
We’ve planned celebrations in all seven cities where we operate our exchanges. We’re picking out some extra special venues with fun activities like wine and spirit tastings. These events will not only be fantastic networking opportunities, but also a chance to toast 30 years of making the internet a fairer, more inclusive place for everyone.
As part of the IAA Convergent ‘network, learn, grow’ promise, we’re also hosting three online events – training and educational seminars designed to equip you with valuable knowledge while celebrating this milestone year. Stay tuned for more details on these, with the first planned for April 2025.
We’re already locked in with the first three locations and are working hard to find that special venue near you, so be sure to pencil the dates in your diary.
Hobart – 5:30pm – 9:00pm AEDT | Tuesday, 25 March 2025 | Frogmore Creek Wine Bar | 18 Hunter Street | Hobart
Melbourne – 5:30pm – 9:00pm AEST | Wednesday, 30 April 2025 | Little Lon Distilling Co. | 17 Casselden Place | Melbourne
Adelaide – 5:30pm – 9:00pm ACST | Wednesday, 21 May 2025 | Prohibition Liquor Co. | 22 Gilbert Street | Adelaide
Save the dates!
Sydney – Wednesday, 4 June 2025 | Venue TBC
Brisbane – Thursday, 19 June 2025 | Venue TBC
Perth – Wednesday, 23 July 2025 | Venue TBC
Canberra – Wednesday, 24 September 2025 | Venue TBC
We’ll be in touch about these events and the rest of our IAA Convergent 30 Years of Peers celebration series soon. Let’s come together to commemorate three decades of building a better internet!
By RSVPing for IAA events, you are agreeing to comply with IAA’s Code of Conduct – Events.
Join our briefing with Q&A for IAA Members regarding our updated Master Service Agreement and Membership Agreement.
To ensure compliance with current legislation and good governance, we have reviewed our Master Service Agreement (MSA) and Membership Agreement (MA). With the assistance of our lawyers, we have conducted a meticulous review and updated the terms of these agreements to ensure compliance with the latest legal requirements.
Please note, we are **not** terminating either of our existing agreements. However, in accordance with clause 24.2 of the MSA, any changes to the Agreement must be in writing and signed by the parties.
In addition, our team has taken this opportunity to streamline processes to benefit our Members by allowing electronic execution of the agreements through the IAA Member Portal, as well as consolidating outdated documents – including the Disconnect Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, Code of Conduct – Members Services, Pricing Policy and Services Schedules – into the MSA. This consolidation simplifies our contractual framework and aligns our terms with current operational practices.
Please review IAA’s new MSA and MA
Applications are open for the 2025 IAASysters program; this time, we’re offering workshops in New Zealand and Australia. Whether you want to apply for yourself, nominate someone, or explore sponsorship opportunities, this is your chance to get involved!
IAASysters NZ Napier Workshop – backed by NZNOG!
With applications closing this week, there’s still time to apply or nominate.
- IAASysters NZ Workshop – Wednesday, 9 April 2025
- NZNOG Conference – Thursday, 10 and Friday, 11 April 2025.
This program is open to both Australians and New Zealanders!
IAASysters Melbourne Workshop
You can also apply for the IAASysters program in Melbourne this year.
- The IAASysters Melbourne Workshop – Tuesday, 2 September 2025
- AusNOG Conference – Wednesday, 3 and Thursday, 4 September 2025.
What’s included for successful applicants
- A ticket to attend the IAASysters Workshop
- A ticket to the AusNOG or NZNOG Conference
- Economy airfare and accommodation (if required)
- A one-year complimentary IAA Professional Membership (for Australian participants only)
Eligibility Criteria for Applicants:
- Must be employed or working towards a career in the internet industry
- Have a passion for the internet and the internet industry
- Reside within Australia or New Zealand (Melbourne is only open to residents of Australia)
As part of the application, we ask for an overview of your current role, a summary of your career aspirations or training, and an endorsement from a mentor or supervisor. Nominators can also submit an endorsement for their nominees.
*Applications are open to ALL types of job roles within the internet industry (network operations, engineering, IT, marketing, regulation, customer support or studying towards a relevant degree or diploma).
Apply or nominate a Syster today via the IAA website:
Applications close
- Melbourne: Friday, 25 April 2025, at 5:00pm AEST
- Napier: Friday, 7 February 2025, at 5:00pm NZDT
Think your organisation might like to sponsor?
For organisations looking to support more women in the tech space, we offer sponsorship opportunities that will highlight your brand’s commitment to an empowered workforce.
We’re proud to be Women in Tech Sponsors at APRICOT 2025, held from 19–27 February in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. APRICOT brings together the Asia Pacific internet community to share knowledge, explore trends, and collaborate on advancing internet networking technologies. We look forward to connecting with industry leaders and supporting greater diversity in tech!
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!
