We have completed deployment of our local (non-authoritative) Internet Route Registry (IRR) mirror, which has already yielded some impressive benefits for members. 

Route server configuration generation and update times have been cut from approximately 15 minutes to approximately one minute. These times apply to the removal of prefix-set expansion from configuration updates as we currently do not filter on prefix-sets. But even with prefix-set generation included, the generation and update times are now only about 5 minutes – this is one-third of what they used to be! 

Additionally, generation/update runs are no longer failing due to connectivity issues or rate limiting by upstream IRR database providers. This was a consistent issue we were running into, especially when an out-of-cycle update was requested by a member to incorporate a change to their allowed ASNs or prefixes. 

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We successfully completed power remediation works at QV1 on 18 October, following several power disruptions to the facility in recent months. Over what seemed like a neverending night we installed a new UPS with better monitoring, a new automatic transfer switch and a new mechanical bypass for the UPS, as well as additional improvements to the redundancy of power feeds to each rack to eliminate single points of failure. This new equipment and configuration are designed to ensure a reliable source of power to all racks in the WAIX room during power disruptions to the wider QV1 building. We thank everyone for their patience in waiting for this work to happen, but we wanted to make sure it went in right, which of course meant appropriate supervision of the work as it happened. 

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To quote Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, ‘Oh, what a night’. Thank you to all who came and celebrated an incredible milestone – 25 years! The evening began with the AGM and quickly moved into the more informal, celebratory portion – WA-IX’s 25th birthday celebration. With a great turnout, we enjoyed the opening remarks from our wonderful CEO, Narelle Clark, followed by a very passionate Welcome to Country delivered by Elder Len Collard – we even received a traditional emblem showing permission for IAA to operate on Whadjuk Nyungar country. Chief Digital Officer Jonas Petersen from the WA Government soon followed with a great speech, finishing off with the incredible Michael Malone talking about WAIA and WA-IX and what it meant for the fledgeling ISP industry.    

The evening buzzed with excitement, and food and drinks continued to flow until the big, delicious WA-IX cake was cut. Michael Malone, Narelle Clark, Anna Protoolis, James Bromberger and Mark Dignam gathered around and finished marking the celebration as they all cut it together.  The evening ended with a couple of special mentions and went straight back into lively chatter. It really was a wonderful celebration, and we hope you all enjoyed it – event photos are now available to view in the Photo Gallery 

Cheers to 25 years!  

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Since we were fortunate enough to have almost the entire Board present at the events, we thought we would slot in a Board Strategy Workshop where we could bring together all the great ideas of the Board and staff, and start making plans for the next year and beyond.  

The day started with a Board meeting that saw Matthew Enger re-appointed as Chair and Brett O’Hara re-appointed as Deputy Chair – congratulations, fellas; we are very appreciative of your hard work. It then continued into very fruitful discussions about much of what we do.  Watch this space, members; there is much to look forward to! 

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Working remotely from home and being spread across 3 states and at times several countries can be a convenient way to work, but it’s always nice to meet the people you chat to on screen. Our team (well, most of us) was lucky enough to enjoy a day together. It started with a very productive planning session; we worked through all the things we would like the future rollouts of the portal to include, and ended with a tour of the QV1 basement: home to some of WA-IX’s equipment, and our point of origin.  

The day continued with a very competitive and adrenalin-filled go-karting session, bringing out the inner drifter and thrill seeker in most of the staff. After plenty of laughs, a few minor crashes and a group photo, we moved on to enjoy the late afternoon in the sun playing a few games of lawn bowls. 

 

 

 

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This year the incredible Women in Technology WA (WiTWA) team are once again running their annual Tech [+] Conference and Awards events. We are proud to be supporting this event as Silver sponsors and would like to invite members to check out these events. The theme this year is ‘Driving sustainable change’ and includes a great line-up of speakers.  

The Tech [+] Conference is WiTWA’s unique offering to the WA tech [+] community. Spend a day meeting WiTWA role models, members, community, and supporters while enjoying the sessions delivered by prominent national and international speakers.  

Date: Thursday, 17 November 2022
Time: 8:00am – 5:45pm (followed by networking drinks)
Location: Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre 

The Tech [+] Awards night takes place the following day in the evening and was created to shine a light on diversity, equity and inclusivity for women who work in tech roles and organisations involved with education advocacy and research in technology-related fields.
Date: Friday, 18 November 2022
Time: 6:45pm – midnight
Location: Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre 

If you would like to attend one or both of these fantastic events, please head to the WitWA website for more details or to purchase tickets.  

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A big thank you to everyone who joined us for this year’s AGM, whether online or in person. The event to mark WA-IX’s 25th went off really well, with many good catch-ups and even some scrumptious cake. It was lovely to see a number of our founders in person again and hear the recognition from government, so it was a fantastic celebration of our 25 plus years of operation. The board and staff also attended strategic planning sessions, so it was a very productive time all round. Nick even managed to supervise some electrical remediation work to sort out the UPS in QV1, and even roped in our Company Secretary to clean out some old gear from there, too! Never waste a moment, or a helper.

As usual, we’ve been keeping a close eye on the regulation coming through. The legislation to modify the penalties and powers for data breaches has been introduced to parliament, with the penalties being proposed as the greater of $50 million, 3 times the benefit obtained by the conduct, or 30% of turnover. This looks to be likely to go through without real consultation or debate, given the extremes of the recent breaches we’ve seen. These penalties are definitely on the hefty side, so should certainly act as a strong deterrent, but are they sufficient incentive for good behaviour? Time will tell…

The updated Federal budget also came through this week with some cash allocated to mobile networks and NBN remediation, which is certainly good to see given the poor performing technology they have in place. Some other initiatives on digital literacy were noted and the additional training places will also be useful to our industry.

After a successful NetThing last week, we’re pulling together our last events for the year too, so if we don’t see you online at the ‘Keep Ukraine Connected’ session, I look forward to seeing you at one of the socials. Happy Networking!

Narelle

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This month’s Meet the Member segment features one of our wonderful members, Jason Bordujenko. Jason has been a member of IAA since 2012 (WAIA at the time), even though he was a Queensland resident – the appeal of the Association was strong given the ever-increasing importance of the industry. Accordingly, with many peers and colleagues also strong advocates equally from the early days until now, he has decided to share his story with us for this newsletter.

Jason was hooked on the Internet from the first moment he heard the screech of the dial-up modem! He says, “I knew there was something excitingly new and revolutionary about what was to become the Internet.” Early day access networks that got Jason started were the 1200/75 (unusual!) rate AUSTPAC X.25 and the Viatel days with Discovery 40 and 80. He explored every part of those networks from green screen monochrome transitioning to 16 colour and everything beyond. With his mother and aunt both long-term employees of Telecom Australia, it seemed like something that ran in his veins, and Jason took to it like a duck to water. Through various means, his explorations took him down the educational pathway. He partnered with the local TAFE in Townsville, who had acquired a shiny new DEC machine, helping them get some of those early computer concurrent user sharing systems online and in widespread use. Through those avenues, he was already passively consuming the content and eventually became one of the early Aussie FidoNet system operators (SysOps) via a bulletin board system that had been running for a few years but looking for a new caretaker. Jason says, “it was great to take a hands-on approach to maintain a system that provided what seemed to be a hobbyist niche but also watching in parallel as the ‘store and forward’ email architectures of FidoNet advancing to permanent leased lines and an insatiable demand for increased capacities of new and emerging Internet architectures in the early ’90s.”

Jason’s career path out of school began with an apprenticeship where he learned all there was to know about broadcast engineering and worked on AM radio transitions to FM in North Queensland across Cairns, Townsville, and Mackay. This led to his first ‘real job’ with the Queensland Police Service, working as an unsworn civilian, but under an interesting mix at the time of public service and ‘blue shirt’ management lines. He worked with the public services for nine years and, in 2007, joined the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet). After introducing video conferencing to his prior role with Police, his AARNet role was primarily geared around facilitating open-standards-based IP audio and video in the real-time communications arena. He was fortunate enough to be part of the AARNet – 20 years of the Internet in Australia celebration and book and has also seen some of his research work published in academic journals through collaborations with the University of Southern Queensland and the University of Wollongong
(https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137037770).  

In his current role, Jason manages a team of solutions architects who concentrate their time across direct customer and channel markets through the recently launched channel engagement program. He joined the Megaport team in early 2016, just off the back of the initial public offering on the ASX. He joined as the first solution architect in the company and promptly went about educating everyone (and anyone that would listen) about how they could flip the script when it came to data-centre, cloud and peering connectivity options. Since joining, Jason has enjoyed the collegiate nature of the industry and credits emerging private cloud connectivity space into the collaborative peering space and wears the hat of both ‘source and sink’ when working with upstream and downstream contacts.

As an individual who always asks the ‘five whys’ about things, Jason enjoys disconnecting from the hyper-connected lifestyle, taking the car on long drives with music blaring and relaxing in nature. In addition, he has an avid interest in cooking, radio and aviation, as well as frequently dabbling in armchair psychology which he occasionally practices on his family and friends.

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