[nznog] Re: NZIX launching WLG-IX soon

After reading Michael's email I thought I would right a quick post around IX's in NZ. I'll try to be as unbiased as possible. (These opinions are my own and don't necessarily reflect that of any organisation I am related to.) There are many advantages to being on IX's for sure. Internet Exchanges a good place to focus the clouds other larger international corporations and content providers in general, for easy access to the country/region's eyeballs. Some peers on the exchanges offer additional services and or/routes (sometimes commercial, including transit) via the IX's using bilateral (bi-lat) peering sessions. Some peers including CDN's done peer with the route servers are all or if do offer a very small subset of routes and expect peers to exstablish a bi-lateral peering session with them. PeeringDB is a great way to find the peering policy of the CDN's and find out how to contact them for bi-lats. Some services (like access to Netflix caches on CHC-IX) are only available via sending specific BGP communities, so it's best to watch the news the exchanges send out from time to time and check in with the IX's. The NZNOG slack is a great way to do that and the three main exchange providers in NZ all have representatives in there <insert Nathan Ward plug on putting your associations in your slack profile and using them to find contacts>. Thought I might jot some quick additional notes on NZ. There are three larger IX's in Auckland (APE, AKL-IX, MegaIX-Auckland) and I would suggest its good practice to join at least two of them for good resilience for when things inevitably do go wrong. The IX's help keep NZ's traffic in NZ, its not best for New Zealanders to have their traffic to go overseas and back to get to other New Zealanders. IX's help lower the costs of smaller ISP's getting traffic to CDN's (the big 2 - 4 will likely have more direct relationships with the dominant content providers in reality, often in addition to the IX paths). The other regions are about lowering the latency and improving the experience for New Zealanders (keeping the south Island customers from coming up to Auckland and back etc), and again offering a point of entry for the CDN's to access the eyeballs more closely and cost effectively. When starting a new IX there is a paradox. The ISP's want to join where there are content providers, and the content providers want to join where there are eyeballs(ISP's). So, if you are an ISP and you want content closer to your customers in a region but are hesitant as there are not content providers on the IX yet, I highly recommend you take advantage of the free periods IX's often run as they start up, as the free periods in part exists to try break the paradox and generate the connections to attract the content networks. Generally speaking, there are a couple of good ways to see who is at an IX (or where an IX is): Peering DB (everyone uses this right?) shows key information about most IX's and clouds in the world including peers. AKL-IX (NZIX) - https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/977 APE (Vital/Citylink) - https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/97 CHC-IX (NZIX) - https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/2797 MegaIX-Auckland (Megaport) - https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/984 WIX (Vital/Citylink) - https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/348 WLG-IX (NZIX) - https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/3568 Another useful tool to look at what routes and peering as actually occurring is to look at the IX looking glass: For NZIX exchanges - https://lg.ix.nz/ For Megaport exchanges - https://lg.megaport.com/ For Vital/Citylink exchanges - http://nzix.net/cgi-bin/lg.cgi Some IX's share further metrics as well such as aggregate throughput and sometimes per peer throughput. To the specific question of Michaels, WLG-IX is pre-launch currently, but in time the links above will provide answers to the question. Hope somebody somewhere found that interesting/informative. Chris -----Original Message----- From: Michael Hallager Sent: Wednesday, 21 July 2021 11:03 pm To: Warren Shepherd Cc: chris.browning(a)ix.nz; nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Re: NZIX launching WLG-IX soon I can attest to the benefits of being on the IX, though in Auckland. Major peering opportunities include: Hurricane Electric (IPv6 and about 1/8 of the IPv4 for free), Cloudflare, Akamai (lots of video content here), Netflix, Microsoft and Amazon. This is especially valuable for ISP type businesses where you can offload a lot of traffic from transit to the IX. Could Chris or someone fill us in on the situation is regards to major peers on Wellington? On 2021-07-21 22:48, Warren Shepherd wrote:

Hi Chris

Keen to order a port at Xtreme. I'm not currently a member, so assume I just apply as a member and then order the port. However, will the minimum $350 per month apply given the 'no port fees for 12 months' offer?

I'm also having difficulty currently loading the application form - it was fine when I looked a few days ago but now I don't appear to get anything loading (have tried couple of different browsers, etc).

If this isn't your area, please let me know who to contact.

Cheers

Warren Shepherd - Zylex

From: chris.browning(a)ix.nz Sent: Monday, 12 July 2021 1:22 PM To: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: [nznog] NZIX launching WLG-IX soon

Hi NZNOG,

Just a quick note to let you all know that NZIX is getting very close to having WLG-IX live, aiming for September. WLG-IX is starting out in two initial locations:

* Xtreme DC * Featherston Street Exchange

We will have 10G and 100G ports available from day one along with a 100G backbone between the two PoP's. We are accepting pre-orders now to enable initial peers to be ready to online for our (yet to be determined) official launch date. I can also confirm that we will operate the exchange without port fees for 12 months from the official launch after which WLG-IX pricing will be aligned with AKL-IX pricing.

If you want to pre order for WLG-IX you can use the members portal https://portal.ix.nz/ [1].

Cheers,

Chris Browning

Chair

New Zealand Internet Exchange Incorporated

Links: ------ [1] https://portal.ix.nz/ _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list -- nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz To unsubscribe send an email to nznog-leave(a)list.waikato.ac.nz

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