The big news this quarter – alongside the activation of 400Gbps ports on VIC-IX – is the release of the network automation features in the IAA Member Portal. With this release, Members are now in full control of their services and are able to turn services off and on at will, or simply update a MAC address on a port. In most cases the changes take a mere TWO minutes to be activated, which all up is an amazing achievement of the team. Of course, they’re not resting on their laurels but building even more features into the pipeline.
We’re also about to change the way in which we bill for our services. To date, we have been issuing bills for services active in the following month, but from July onwards we’ll be billing for the same month the bill is issued. As part of the change over, this means we will be sending $0 bills in June, as the bill for June was sent in May and Members will have already paid for those services. From July, we will be sending July’s bill on 1 July, August’s bill on 1 August, September’s bill on 1 September and so on. We’re doing this to make things simpler for everyone as it reduces the rework and confusion when services change over the month. With network automation you have more flexibility to turn things up and down, and now your invoices will also reflect your changes sooner.
We’ve also been working hard to help all our Members be compliant with the new DFSV Standard, by issuing policy templates and procedures, and holding well-attended briefings. We’ll soon round all this out with training sessions, meaning our Members and partners from the WISPAU are all nicely compliant. Feedback has been tremendous on this material and given the mountain of compliance work we all have to do to keep running these days we will make sure we continue to produce templates and guides for our Members’ use (check out this issue’s info on the new mandatory Outage Register obligation). We’ll also keep the pressure on the various regulators to lighten the load and help to make your obligations simpler and clearer.
Our events last quarter have also been well attended, fun and interesting; with one at the NBN Discovery Centre and another at the National Communication Museum, the latter marking 15yrs of VIC-IX. We also presented at NZNOG, ran IAASysters NZ, and helped out with the NZIX tenth anniversary event. We hope you can make our next Member event in Brisbane!
Happy peering!
Narelle
Question from the desk
Each newsletter, I will pose a question to Members, because your perspective is important. Please email me with your thoughts and opinions. Over to you:
In the era of risk compliance – which model have you chosen to certify with, and why?
We’re looking at the Essential Eight model, for its simplicity. What about you?
