IAA to Consult Members on Virtual Peering Ports

At IAAs AGM in August, the Association announced it would be releasing Virtual Peering Ports in Q4 of this year, however, due to recent circumstances, all projects were temporarily suspended.

IAA, through its peering fabric IX Australia, is now ready to conduct an open beta of the VPP product and consult members and possible users of the product to determine the best construct.

To use a VPP, members will be able to order the 100M or 1G service delivered over their current infrastructure port, on a VLAN tag of their choice. Billing will be to the owner of the port with the aim of allowing members to sell peering as a service to downstream customers over their own infrastructure.

Downstream peering customers will still need to have their own NIC resources, essentially their own ASN and address space. A NOC contact at the downstream peer will still be required and BGP support queries can be sent directly to IX Australia by those contacts.

As indicated, the downstream customer will be able to use their own ASN and address space, which is also a qualification to use a VPP. NIC resources must be valid.

The 100M and 1G limits are specifically designed to allow IAA to provide a migration path for the downstream customer to matriculate to be a full member.

At this stage, prices are likely to be $30 and $90 ex GST, monthly per VPP. Price consultation and feedback will form part of this open beta process.

Suggested uses cases:

• National Network Operator – blend your own peering to supplement transit, OR:  deliver peering ports from IX Australia sites in QLD, NSW, VIC, ACT, SA, WA and soon TAS.
• Hosting Provider – a large content client has their own APNIC resources, wants to multi-home, order a VPP into the local IX to allow them to peer.
• International Telco – using the local peering port as an NNI between internal clients and a local IX Australia POP.
• MSP/Wholesale ISP – take out a large port on the IX for the prime purpose of providing enterprise customers access to peering, especially to MICROSOFT, GOOGLE and AWS cloud.

For more information on the consultation process or to indicate an EOI in VPP email peering@internet.asn.au