All,
We���ve had some interesting announcements of Megaport and IX Australia building internet exchanges into NZ over the last week or so. I���ve been a bit surprised at how little chatter there has been around this on the list.
I thought I���d put some thoughts down (as someone who has worked for a bunch of networks in NZ and is now overseas working for big content) with hope of kicking off a discussion.
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!
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.
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���.
- Megaport, who have placed huge focus on their ���Virtual Cross Connect��� product and being able to configure this on the fly, but also have run a pretty successful IX.
- IX Australia, who are very IX focused, and have gone to great pains to ensure that that���s their only product, making them the most ���independent���. IX Australia also have public graphs of traffic levels through their IX (i.e. for NSW-iX http://monitor.nsw.ix.asn.au/cacti/graph_image.php?action=view&local_graph_id=91&rra_id=2) - which is commendable (it would be nice to see Megaport and Citylink follow suit on this one)
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.
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.
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?
Cheers,
Hoff