To be clear, I��m in no way affiliated with any of the 3 IX operators in, or soon to be in New Zealand. I work for a content provider that is not currently in New Zealand (though my views in no way represent $my_employer), however have spent the better part of the last decade involved in the build out of some fairly large pieces of infrastructure in New Zealand.

Citylink have done a great job of building some of the most critical pieces of infrastructure in the New Zealand internet. Their efforts to this point, and plans going forward should be (and generally are I believe) highly regarded and valued by the community. These market developments however, are worthy of discussion.

APE is a great exchange for both content and ISPs exchanging traffic. WIX realistically won��t get the major content any time soon due to physical location; as mentioned it��s a difficult enough business case to come into NZ, let alone to a second location in NZ! But it is a hugely critical piece of infrastructure for ISPs exchanging traffic between each other.

On this basis, multiple, resilient sets of infrastructure in Auckland make a lot of sense. While we can all build the best of networks in a resilient manner, having a different set of kit, software versioning, and operators managing it is really the gold standard for resiliency. Just the same as if you want the best diversity in your transit, you would buy from two transit providers, this has merit when talking about IXs, especially when you are on an island in the bottom of the south pacific that connects to the world with two very long bits of string that span the pacific ;).

Additionally, competition is a positive thing. This isn��t a negative for Citylink, this is something great for the whole community that will add to - not detract from - the great work Citylink have done. It��s also worth noting that Citylink are making significant investments in developing their platforms, as are the new players in coming into country - and it��s something to be celebrated to see more investment in this infrastructure happening.

As mentioned before, I think the one danger is that this causes the IX community to become fractured - with very separated bits of content on each IX. This would be detrimental for the ��New Zealand Network�� as a whole. As long as all the big players are available on a single or two of the IXs - it��ll be fine - but if a small player had to connect to all 3 to get the NZ route table, that would be incredibly detrimental as it would raise the barrier of entry for any new ISP.

Cheers,

Hoff

On 11/11/2014, at 5:15 pm, Lin Nah <lin@darkmere.gen.nz> wrote:

On Tue, 11 Nov 2014, Tim Hoffman wrote:
At a 10,000 foot view, New Zealand has had a reasonably successful operation of IXs over the last 10-15 years. All of y��all except for the two big operators openly peer. This is awesome!

So are the two big operators openly peering with your IX?

However, as has been discussed in other posts recently;
1/ More and more of the internet is becoming about connectivity from CDNs to users.
2/ More and more CDNs are coming to New Zealand and Australia
3/ Trans-tasman capacity isn��t hugely expensive

Addressing points (1) and (2), as content comes into New Zealand, we have to remember that on a global scale, New Zealand is absolutely tiny. It��s a hard business case to get a POP there as a content provider. Content providers that do come are likely just going to put in a single location - Auckland. So while WIX may make sense for ISPs in NZ peering with each other, for the bulk of the *interesting* content on the internet that you can get through peering, you��re going to have to get it in Auckland. Networks have outages, planned works, etc. So assuming that most of NZ��s interesting content is in Auckland (with a bit more over the Tasman, which isn��t too expensive to get to these days), it makes sense to have multiple (redundantly built and managed) ways of getting at this content.

We have APE, Auckland Peering Exchange.
http://ape.nzix.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Peering_Exchange

Why pick on WIX? Not everyone has to go peer with WIX if their traffic
is mainly in Auckland. Isn't that what APE is for?
Or has APE gone away overnight?

We also have IXes in other cities too. http://nzix.net/ has a list of
other peering exchanges.

I hear what you say abou CDNs BUT I just had to pipe about APE because
anyone who reads this and have no idea about APE may get the impression
there's only WIX in NZ.
(obviously not the case with ppl in this list)

It��s interesting looking at the differences between the 3 IXs we��re about to have.
Citylink, who have the critical mass of all the peers, are in the most locations, and are the most expensive. They��ve also got a product set around metro ethernet, dark fibre, and have a CDN running. And they��re doing some interesting things around a ��SDN driven IX��.

If you look at the history of how APE + WIX were set up and why we needed IXes in NZ you'll work out why they have critical mass there.

If the present IXes aren't delivering what nznog community needs, why
haven't we made changes to it to ensure it does?

I suspect you��re going to find that most of the content will try to get to all 3. It��s my hope that most of the bigger ISPs try to get to all three, then the smaller ones can go to a couple, get most NZ routes reliantly over peering, and then transit the rest if it has to happen. It would be disappointing if we didn��t see the top 5-6 IXs + all the content providers on all of them. Also it��ll be important to ensure that the result isn��t just that we have 3 split IX communities, all with different content/users on them without crossover, as this would cause a huge barrier to entry to smaller players if they have to connect to all 3.

Are you guys going to be a neutral IX?
Would you openly peer with all IXes in NZ?

For the community, having this competition is going to be a win. It won��t kill APE, which has huge critical mass, and has done a great job in it��s long history, but will ensure that all 3 IXs keep each other honest. What will be interesting to see is who turns up at which IX and how they all grow together.

Are you implying there's something shady happening with the present IX
setup?

What��s everyone else��s thoughts? It would be interesting particularly if there is anyone from Citylink, or any of the big ISPs, who could comment on their take on these developments in the market and where they will be peering?

I'm not from citylink nor am I their customer.

regards
lin

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