IAA Newsletters
This month’s meet the member segment features our wonderful Chair, Matthew Enger. Matt is the Managing Director of X Integration and Leaptel and joined IAA in 2016 as a relative newbie in the Internet industry. He joined after being told that this peering idea is a ‘good thing to do’ and looking for a way to reduce his transit bill that was costing him $20 per Meg! He has come to learn what peering is and just how important it is to us as a country.
Matt became interested in the Internet when it was a new thing. He was in secondary school at the time and moved his school from a dialup modem being shared by everyone to a Linux box running IP masquerade over a 64k ATM link and remembers thinking – WOW! From there, he got involved in things like ml.org offering free DNS and played with website hosting and built his own interactive website with Perl and later PHP. After living in Hong Kong, he returned to Australia and was accidentally invited to help a customer of a friend with their dialup ISP. Since then, he’s been hooked!
Throughout his career, Matt has achieved many things. After his first internet company didn’t make it as selling dialup for $16.95 per month in an all you can eat fashion wasn’t sustainable, he ended up moving into business IT, but with a side of ADSL. The business owner at the time wanted to move on and handed him the keys to the kingdom and its customers – X Integration was formed. From there, he built up a business customer base, and after a few disasters (Veridas dying overnight, ISPOne collapsing), he looked at his customer base and realised he could do this ADSL thing himself. They began selling ADSL and NBN via an aggregator and established Leaptel. Since then, they have moved into mainstream Internet, and he has been learning and growing his network skills to support a national network with five datacentres and lots of customers! They also recently connected to 121 NBN POIs and have a direct relationship with NBN. This means they have lots of CVC (1.5G x 121 POIs), so if anyone wants fast Internet with no congestion, please sign up!
All business aside, when Matt’s not working, he splits his time between family (two girls aged 10 and 6) and Scouting. He really enjoys Scouting and finds it exciting to see 3000 kids attend the recent Victorian Jamboree in January and have such a great time after two years of being locked down due to Covid. He says he is lucky in his role as the Victorian State Commissioner – Scouts to have a significant positive impact on the lives of kids throughout Australia.
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Work continues on the new portal! Over the past four weeks, we’ve implemented a number of features and updated the theme to make sure the new portal not only works well but looks great, too. Spoiler alert, we’ve added in a ‘tool’ menu so you can have fast access to the tools you need to keep up to date with things happening on your network.
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Remember our announcement in March about our network cracking over 800Gbps? Well, two months on, and with many thanks to our newest content provider and the gaming community in Australia, our network hit a new record of 901Gbps on Wednesday, 11 May. From the moment the caches were live, the traffic started coming in fast, and it was only a matter of time before we reached the 900Gbps club. Watch out, members; 1Tbps is on the horizon and when it’s here, we’re going to celebrate!!
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Earlier this month, we racked and stacked a new PKG mirror hosted on NSW-IX. The new mirror is the first of its kind here in Australia and will make a big difference for FreeBSD users in Southeast Asia and Oceania.
FreeBSD is an operating system for a variety of platforms that focuses on features, speed and stability. With its cutting edge features, it offers advanced networking, performance, security and compatibility. Best of all, FreeBSD is free! As a community project, FreeBSD relies on the collaborative work of the community. There are a number of ways in which you can contribute, and to find out more about these, check out the contributing to FreeBSD page.
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Earlier this month, we welcomed Steam to the network, and from day one, the peak kept growing, pushing our network to reach a new traffic record of 901Gbps on Wednesday 11 May. The latest addition of Steam caches means that with 440Gbps of caching capacity between Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth, our gamers can enjoy increased speeds when downloading new games or updating an old favourite.
Steam caches are opt-in by default, and if you would like to opt-out of these caches, you may do so by using the following communities:
- 10084:2508 WA STM Opt Out
- 10084:2518 VIC STM Opt Out
- 10084:2528 QLD STM Opt Out
If you require any assistance to opt-out, please do not hesitate to contact one of our friendly team members at peering@ix.asn.au
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National Data Security Action Plan | Department of Home Affairs | 10 June 2022
The Department of Home Affairs is calling for submissions for the development of the National Data Security Action Plan. They seek to explore with industry and state and territory governments how Government and industry can meet data security expectations, how responsibilities can be best assigned to keep Australians’ data safe, and how Government, businesses and individuals can share responsibility for data security in the future to get the best outcome for everyone.
NBN Co. SAU Variation | ACCC | 8 July 2022
The ACCC is seeking submissions to its report on NBN Co.’s SAU Variation. The proposed variation from NBN Co includes product and pricing commitments, changing the framework for NBN Co’s cost recovery, and incorporating fibre-to-the-node and other copper-based technologies to create a single regulatory framework for all technologies.
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Given the recent federal election, IAA’s policy team has largely worked on publications related to the election in May. We published our 2022 IAA Election Wish List, outlining the policies we would like to see adopted by the political parties. We also released our 2022 Election – Policy Assessment evaluating the policy platform of the major political parties in comparison to our Election Wish List.
Unrelated to the election, we also released a Customer Identity Authentication whitepaper to provide information and guidance on the new ACMA rules and steps that members will need to implement in order to ensure compliance with the new rules by 30 June 2022. We hope you find this guide useful.
5 Year Independent Review | Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman
In our submission to the Independent Review, we raised the concerns of industry, particularly relating to the inherent issues in the TIO’s complaints handling structure and costs model. We noted that this inherently affects the ability of the TIO to meet industry benchmarks.
Statutory Review | Department of Treasury
We primarily focused on the need to ensure that the costs to industry are being properly considered and that there is a commitment to ensuring rules will realise actual benefits for consumers.
Industry Guidance on the Carrier Separation Rules | ACCC
In our response, we raised attention to obligations not specified directly in the rules but contained in the written notice to avoid any confusion.
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Well, wasn’t that a fun-filled month! The longest election campaign in recent history is over at last, and we have a new government. We can say goodbye to unwanted vile political text messages, nasty social media memes and pork barrelling, and we’ll move to a new regimen of well-articulated policy discourse by a polite and caring political class motivated by the nation’s best interest, not simply the retention of power. [Yes, I know it’s a dream, but I live in hope.] Seriously, we congratulate the new Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese and look forward to deepening our relationship with Michelle Rowland as the expected Communications Minister. We also wish Paul Fletcher and his team well and thank them for their service.
You may have noticed we issued an election wish list and rated the political parties’ policy platforms in the lead up to the election. One thing we asked for was that the new government restore trust in our political processes. While an integrity commission is a key component of a trustworthy system, our issue is with the government’s approach to engagement with industry: we’ve had too many tokenistic consultations and rushed legislation rather than constructive engagement towards effective, efficient regulation. We’ll keep on asking.
Last month I also managed to attend NZNOG in Wellington and caught up with our NZIX colleagues and many of the NZ based ISPs. If you get a chance, have a look over the many useful presentations, such as the OpenLI, security and 800G sessions. They also had a number of sessions given by government which had me feel I was in some parallel universe with genuine, constructive government-industry relations. Sweet as!
Looking forward, we’re doing some heavy analysis to properly scope out our program of upgrades and expansion. In the wake of our cracking the 900Gbps level, our member survey on sites, and looming equipment shortages, we will need to do some rearrangement, and it may well mean the closure of one or two POPs where there are no members present anymore. In this way, we can ensure we have the capacity you want in the places you want, as well as ensure efficient cache fill and plenty of head room for intra-IX traffic. So here’s the challenge: how about for the 25th anniversary of WA-IX next month we break the TERRABIT barrier? Come on, you know you can do it!
