New IXs in NZ - discussion - NZNOG

New IXs in NZ - discussion

Tim Hoffman

11 Nov 2014 11 Nov '14

2:18 a.m.

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 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

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Alexander Neilson

11 Nov 11 Nov

2:31 a.m.

One of the things from our side of this is we are currently getting a reasonably good service from APE and they are directly available to us (SkyTower) I found the Megaport launch announcement very interesting and while some clarity around the pricing details was made I am very interested in seeing how things come out in the wash. The VxC may be helpful re my IX Australia (maybe they will have a name change now) points below but also I am very interested in seeing how this may impact the market. Could be very interesting if we got content providers directly peering to these IX’s over Megaport connections (Using their Australian POPs but linking into the NZ Megaport IX so if you came onto the Megaport IX Offering then the providers had already brought themselves to our doors). This is one thing I will be monitoring as our traffic volumes are high enough for direct peering with some of the large content players but only if we are at the same facility. This could allow us to long line that. For IX Australia’s new IX Its only available at 220 Queen (we can get Megaport VxC for that) but we are not in there yet so until it gets a little bit of sign up I can’t get money for us to join in (but again thanks to Megaport not requiring long terms on links much easier to get approval for it) So very exciting times for everyone and would be great if people would be willing to let us on list know who is bringing connections into it (content or eyeball) so that those of us very small fish in (relatively) small pond worldwide can look at our priorities for connecting (where I should fight the strongest for first) Thank you Tim for your insights. Regards Alexander Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Limited alexander(a)neilson.net.nz 021 329 681 022 456 2326

...

On 12/11/2014, at 10:18 am, Tim Hoffman wrote:

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 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

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

Skeeve Stevens

3 a.m.

One thing I would expect from both of the new players is a free ramp up period for it to become useful. That's what Megaport did in Australia, but we will see if Vibe extends that. I would assume IX.A would also do something similar to gain traction. ...Skeeve *Skeeve Stevens - *eintellego Networks Pty Ltd skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz ; www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz Phone: +612 8014 7398; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve facebook.com/eintellegonetworks ; http://twitter.com/networkceoau linkedin.com/in/skeeve twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.com The Experts Who The Experts Call Juniper - Cisco - Cloud - Consulting - IPv4 Brokering On 12 November 2014 08:31, Alexander Neilson wrote:

...

One of the things from our side of this is we are currently getting a reasonably good service from APE and they are directly available to us (SkyTower)

I found the Megaport launch announcement very interesting and while some clarity around the pricing details was made I am very interested in seeing how things come out in the wash. The VxC may be helpful re my IX Australia (maybe they will have a name change now) points below but also I am very interested in seeing how this may impact the market. Could be very interesting if we got content providers directly peering to these IX’s over Megaport connections (Using their Australian POPs but linking into the NZ Megaport IX so if you came onto the Megaport IX Offering then the providers had already brought themselves to our doors). This is one thing I will be monitoring as our traffic volumes are high enough for direct peering with some of the large content players but only if we are at the same facility. This could allow us to long line that.

For IX Australia’s new IX Its only available at 220 Queen (we can get Megaport VxC for that) but we are not in there yet so until it gets a little bit of sign up I can’t get money for us to join in (but again thanks to Megaport not requiring long terms on links much easier to get approval for it)

So very exciting times for everyone and would be great if people would be willing to let us on list know who is bringing connections into it (content or eyeball) so that those of us very small fish in (relatively) small pond worldwide can look at our priorities for connecting (where I should fight the strongest for first)

Thank you Tim for your insights.

Regards Alexander

Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Limited

alexander(a)neilson.net.nz 021 329 681 022 456 2326

On 12/11/2014, at 10:18 am, Tim Hoffman wrote:

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

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

Michael Glynn

3:23 a.m.

We sure are Skeeve :)) Megaport will launch in NZ by Friday of this week at The Data Centre with Datacom coming on line in the following weeks. We're excited to enable Auckland as part of our Australian network. Megaport users can now Virtual Cross Connect between Auckland and our national network of data centres – giving access to global cloud and content on one platform. To celebrate, we have a couple of launch offers: 1x 10G Port at The Data Centre free for the first 2 months or sign up for Auckland and Sydney and receive 100MB protected capacity for free for 3 months. Sign up here http://www.megaport.com/nz/ Feel free to contact me off list for more information MG From: Skeeve Stevens mailto:skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz> Date: Tuesday, 11 November 2014 5:00 pm To: Alexander Neilson mailto:alexander(a)neilson.net.nz> Cc: nznog mailto:nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz> Subject: Re: [nznog] New IXs in NZ - discussion One thing I would expect from both of the new players is a free ramp up period for it to become useful. That's what Megaport did in Australia, but we will see if Vibe extends that. I would assume IX.A would also do something similar to gain traction. ...Skeeve Skeeve Stevens - eintellego Networks Pty Ltd skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nzmailto:skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz ; www.eintellegonetworks.co.nzhttp://www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz Phone: +612 8014 7398; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve facebook.com/eintellegonetworkshttp://facebook.com/eintellegonetworks ; http://twitter.com/networkceoau linkedin.com/in/skeevehttp://linkedin.com/in/skeeve twitter.com/theispguyhttp://twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.comhttp://www.theispguy.com/ [http://eintellegonetworks.com/logos/ein09.png] The Experts Who The Experts Call Juniper - Cisco - Cloud - Consulting - IPv4 Brokering On 12 November 2014 08:31, Alexander Neilson mailto:alexander(a)neilson.net.nz> wrote: One of the things from our side of this is we are currently getting a reasonably good service from APE and they are directly available to us (SkyTower) I found the Megaport launch announcement very interesting and while some clarity around the pricing details was made I am very interested in seeing how things come out in the wash. The VxC may be helpful re my IX Australia (maybe they will have a name change now) points below but also I am very interested in seeing how this may impact the market. Could be very interesting if we got content providers directly peering to these IX’s over Megaport connections (Using their Australian POPs but linking into the NZ Megaport IX so if you came onto the Megaport IX Offering then the providers had already brought themselves to our doors). This is one thing I will be monitoring as our traffic volumes are high enough for direct peering with some of the large content players but only if we are at the same facility. This could allow us to long line that. For IX Australia’s new IX Its only available at 220 Queen (we can get Megaport VxC for that) but we are not in there yet so until it gets a little bit of sign up I can’t get money for us to join in (but again thanks to Megaport not requiring long terms on links much easier to get approval for it) So very exciting times for everyone and would be great if people would be willing to let us on list know who is bringing connections into it (content or eyeball) so that those of us very small fish in (relatively) small pond worldwide can look at our priorities for connecting (where I should fight the strongest for first) Thank you Tim for your insights. Regards Alexander Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Limited alexander(a)neilson.net.nzmailto:alexander(a)neilson.net.nz 021 329 681 022 456 2326 On 12/11/2014, at 10:18 am, Tim Hoffman mailto:tim(a)hoffman.net.nz> wrote: 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 _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nzmailto:NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nzmailto:NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

Barry Murphy

4:44 a.m.

Without trying to sound commercial, if you want to connect to the Megaport fabric from any of the DC’s listed on http://www.intellipath.co.nz/#!connected-facilities/cjkz it’s quite simple and realtime. We will credit the first two months free for the Port and virtual cross connect which is normally $200 for the port, $200 for the IX and $150 flat rate for within Auckland for a 1g circuit, so it matches the Megaport offering. You don’t need to be a Megaport customer, so the total will be $550 for the gig port for anyone at the on-net Auckland DC’s. To keep on topic, the first 5 signups to the IX service will get a box of beer provided you are over 18, there will also be another gift engineers will love worth $200 :) Cheers Kind regards, Barry Murphy / Chief Operating Officer +64 27 490 9712 / barry(a)vibecommunications.co.nzmailto:barry(a)vibecommunications.co.nz [3sparks llc]http://www.vibecommunications.co.nz/ [Vibe Communications] https://www.facebook.com/VibeCom [Vibe Communications] https://twitter.com/vibecomnz [Vibe Communications] https://www.linkedin.com/company/1941512 Office: +64 9 222 0000 / Fax: 0800 842 326 Unit A7, 1 Beresford Square, Auckland, New Zealand Web: www.vibecommunications.co.nzhttp://www.vibecommunications.co.nz/ / Peering: AS45177http://www.peeringdb.com/view.php?asn=45177 This communication, including any attachments, is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you should not read it - please contact me immediately, destroy it, and do not copy or use any part of this communication or disclose anything about it. Thank you. Please note that this communication does not designate an information system for the purposes of the Electronic Transactions Act 2002. From: Michael Glynn mailto:Michael.Glynn(a)megaport.com> Date: Wednesday, 12 November 2014 11:23 am To: Skeeve Stevens mailto:skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz> Cc: nznog mailto:nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz> Subject: Re: [nznog] New IXs in NZ - discussion We sure are Skeeve :)) Megaport will launch in NZ by Friday of this week at The Data Centre with Datacom coming on line in the following weeks. We're excited to enable Auckland as part of our Australian network. Megaport users can now Virtual Cross Connect between Auckland and our national network of data centres – giving access to global cloud and content on one platform. To celebrate, we have a couple of launch offers: 1x 10G Port at The Data Centre free for the first 2 months or sign up for Auckland and Sydney and receive 100MB protected capacity for free for 3 months. Sign up here http://www.megaport.com/nz/ Feel free to contact me off list for more information MG From: Skeeve Stevens mailto:skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz> Date: Tuesday, 11 November 2014 5:00 pm To: Alexander Neilson mailto:alexander(a)neilson.net.nz> Cc: nznog mailto:nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz> Subject: Re: [nznog] New IXs in NZ - discussion One thing I would expect from both of the new players is a free ramp up period for it to become useful. That's what Megaport did in Australia, but we will see if Vibe extends that. I would assume IX.A would also do something similar to gain traction. ...Skeeve Skeeve Stevens - eintellego Networks Pty Ltd skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nzmailto:skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz ; www.eintellegonetworks.co.nzhttp://www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz Phone: +612 8014 7398; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve facebook.com/eintellegonetworkshttp://facebook.com/eintellegonetworks ; http://twitter.com/networkceoau linkedin.com/in/skeevehttp://linkedin.com/in/skeeve twitter.com/theispguyhttp://twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.comhttp://www.theispguy.com/ [http://eintellegonetworks.com/logos/ein09.png] The Experts Who The Experts Call Juniper - Cisco - Cloud - Consulting - IPv4 Brokering On 12 November 2014 08:31, Alexander Neilson mailto:alexander(a)neilson.net.nz> wrote: One of the things from our side of this is we are currently getting a reasonably good service from APE and they are directly available to us (SkyTower) I found the Megaport launch announcement very interesting and while some clarity around the pricing details was made I am very interested in seeing how things come out in the wash. The VxC may be helpful re my IX Australia (maybe they will have a name change now) points below but also I am very interested in seeing how this may impact the market. Could be very interesting if we got content providers directly peering to these IX’s over Megaport connections (Using their Australian POPs but linking into the NZ Megaport IX so if you came onto the Megaport IX Offering then the providers had already brought themselves to our doors). This is one thing I will be monitoring as our traffic volumes are high enough for direct peering with some of the large content players but only if we are at the same facility. This could allow us to long line that. For IX Australia’s new IX Its only available at 220 Queen (we can get Megaport VxC for that) but we are not in there yet so until it gets a little bit of sign up I can’t get money for us to join in (but again thanks to Megaport not requiring long terms on links much easier to get approval for it) So very exciting times for everyone and would be great if people would be willing to let us on list know who is bringing connections into it (content or eyeball) so that those of us very small fish in (relatively) small pond worldwide can look at our priorities for connecting (where I should fight the strongest for first) Thank you Tim for your insights. Regards Alexander Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Limited alexander(a)neilson.net.nzmailto:alexander(a)neilson.net.nz 021 329 681 022 456 2326 On 12/11/2014, at 10:18 am, Tim Hoffman mailto:tim(a)hoffman.net.nz> wrote: 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 _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nzmailto:NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nzmailto:NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

NOC ＠ NGW

4:50 a.m.

Great stuff Barry, HD NET just signed up via your website, looking forward to being connected and will let others know how we get on. (to admin of NZNOG, I feel these kind of offers on this forum, from long standing community members actually help the community overall, just my 2cents). :-) -- NOC @ Next Generation Wholesale - ngw.co.nz On 12/11/2014 12:44 p.m., Barry Murphy wrote:

...

Without trying to sound commercial, if you want to connect to the Megaport fabric from any of the DC's listed on http://www.intellipath.co.nz/#!connected-facilities/cjkz http://www.intellipath.co.nz/#%21connected-facilities/cjkz it's quite simple and realtime. We will credit the first two months free for the Port and virtual cross connect which is normally $200 for the port, $200 for the IX and $150 flat rate for within Auckland for a 1g circuit, so it matches the Megaport offering. You don't need to be a Megaport customer, so the total will be $550 for the gig port for anyone at the on-net Auckland DC's.

To keep on topic, the first 5 signups to the IX service will get a box of beer provided you are over 18, there will also be another gift engineers will love worth $200 :)

Cheers

Kind regards,

*Barry Murphy* / *Chief Operating Officer* +64 27 490 9712 /_barry(a)vibecommunications.co.nz mailto:barry(a)vibecommunications.co.nz_

3sparks llc http://www.vibecommunications.co.nz/ Vibe Communications https://www.facebook.com/VibeCom Vibe Communications https://twitter.com/vibecomnz Vibe Communications https://www.linkedin.com/company/1941512

Office: +64 9 222 0000 / Fax: 0800 842 326 Unit A7, 1 Beresford Square, Auckland, New Zealand Web:www.vibecommunications.co.nz http://www.vibecommunications.co.nz/ / Peering:AS45177 http://www.peeringdb.com/view.php?asn=45177

This communication, including any attachments, is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you should not read it - please contact me immediately, destroy it, and do not copy or use any part of this communication or disclose anything about it. Thank you. Please note that this communication does not designate an information system for the purposes of the Electronic Transactions Act 2002.

From: Michael Glynn mailto:Michael.Glynn(a)megaport.com> Date: Wednesday, 12 November 2014 11:23 am To: Skeeve Stevens mailto:skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz> Cc: nznog mailto:nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz> Subject: Re: [nznog] New IXs in NZ - discussion

We sure are Skeeve :))

Megaport will launch in NZ by Friday of this week at The Data Centre with Datacom coming on line in the following weeks. We're excited to enable Auckland as part of our Australian network. Megaport users can now Virtual Cross Connect between Auckland and our national network of data centres -- giving access to global cloud and content on one platform.

To celebrate, we have a couple of launch offers:

1x 10G Port at The Data Centre free for the first 2 months or sign up for Auckland and Sydney and receive 100MB protected capacity for free for 3 months.

Sign up here http://www.megaport.com/nz/

Feel free to contact me off list for more information

MG

From: Skeeve Stevens mailto:skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz> Date: Tuesday, 11 November 2014 5:00 pm To: Alexander Neilson mailto:alexander(a)neilson.net.nz> Cc: nznog mailto:nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz> Subject: Re: [nznog] New IXs in NZ - discussion

One thing I would expect from both of the new players is a free ramp up period for it to become useful.

That's what Megaport did in Australia, but we will see if Vibe extends that.

I would assume IX.A would also do something similar to gain traction.

...Skeeve

*Skeeve Stevens - *eintellego Networks Pty Ltd skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz mailto:skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz ; www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz http://www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz

Phone: +612 8014 7398; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve

facebook.com/eintellegonetworks http://facebook.com/eintellegonetworks ; linkedin.com/in/skeeve http://linkedin.com/in/skeeve

twitter.com/theispguy http://twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.com http://www.theispguy.com/

The Experts Who The Experts Call Juniper - Cisco - Cloud - Consulting- IPv4 Brokering

On 12 November 2014 08:31, Alexander Neilson mailto:alexander(a)neilson.net.nz> wrote:

One of the things from our side of this is we are currently getting a reasonably good service from APE and they are directly available to us (SkyTower)

I found the Megaport launch announcement very interesting and while some clarity around the pricing details was made I am very interested in seeing how things come out in the wash. The VxC may be helpful re my IX Australia (maybe they will have a name change now) points below but also I am very interested in seeing how this may impact the market. Could be very interesting if we got content providers directly peering to these IX's over Megaport connections (Using their Australian POPs but linking into the NZ Megaport IX so if you came onto the Megaport IX Offering then the providers had already brought themselves to our doors). This is one thing I will be monitoring as our traffic volumes are high enough for direct peering with some of the large content players but only if we are at the same facility. This could allow us to long line that.

For IX Australia's new IX Its only available at 220 Queen (we can get Megaport VxC for that) but we are not in there yet so until it gets a little bit of sign up I can't get money for us to join in (but again thanks to Megaport not requiring long terms on links much easier to get approval for it)

So very exciting times for everyone and would be great if people would be willing to let us on list know who is bringing connections into it (content or eyeball) so that those of us very small fish in (relatively) small pond worldwide can look at our priorities for connecting (where I should fight the strongest for first)

Thank you Tim for your insights.

Regards Alexander

Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Limited

alexander(a)neilson.net.nz mailto:alexander(a)neilson.net.nz 021 329 681 022 456 2326

...
On 12/11/2014, at 10:18 am, Tim Hoffman mailto:tim(a)hoffman.net.nz> wrote:

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

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz mailto:NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz mailto:NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

Skeeve Stevens

5:49 a.m.

+1 when talking about new network infrastructure... helping out the community is a good thing (tm) ...Skeeve *Skeeve Stevens - *eintellego Networks Pty Ltd skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz ; www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz Phone: +612 8014 7398; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve facebook.com/eintellegonetworks ; http://twitter.com/networkceoau linkedin.com/in/skeeve twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.com The Experts Who The Experts Call Juniper - Cisco - Cloud - Consulting - IPv4 Brokering On 12 November 2014 10:50, NOC @ NGW wrote:

...

Great stuff Barry, HD NET just signed up via your website, looking forward to being connected and will let others know how we get on. (to admin of NZNOG, I feel these kind of offers on this forum, from long standing community members actually help the community overall, just my 2cents). :-)

-- NOC @ Next Generation Wholesale - ngw.co.nz

On 12/11/2014 12:44 p.m., Barry Murphy wrote:

Without trying to sound commercial, if you want to connect to the Megaport fabric from any of the DC’s listed on http://www.intellipath.co.nz/#!connected-facilities/cjkz it’s quite simple and realtime. We will credit the first two months free for the Port and virtual cross connect which is normally $200 for the port, $200 for the IX and $150 flat rate for within Auckland for a 1g circuit, so it matches the Megaport offering. You don’t need to be a Megaport customer, so the total will be $550 for the gig port for anyone at the on-net Auckland DC’s.

To keep on topic, the first 5 signups to the IX service will get a box of beer provided you are over 18, there will also be another gift engineers will love worth $200 :)

Cheers

Kind regards,

*Barry Murphy* / *Chief Operating Officer* +64 27 490 9712 / *barry(a)vibecommunications.co.nz *

[image: 3sparks llc] http://www.vibecommunications.co.nz/ [image: Vibe Communications] https://www.facebook.com/VibeCom [image: Vibe Communications] https://twitter.com/vibecomnz [image: Vibe Communications] https://www.linkedin.com/company/1941512

Office: +64 9 222 0000 / Fax: 0800 842 326 Unit A7, 1 Beresford Square, Auckland, New Zealand Web: www.vibecommunications.co.nz / Peering: AS45177 http://www.peeringdb.com/view.php?asn=45177

This communication, including any attachments, is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you should not read it - please contact me immediately, destroy it, and do not copy or use any part of this communication or disclose anything about it. Thank you. Please note that this communication does not designate an information system for the purposes of the Electronic Transactions Act 2002.

From: Michael Glynn Date: Wednesday, 12 November 2014 11:23 am To: Skeeve Stevens Cc: nznog Subject: Re: [nznog] New IXs in NZ - discussion

We sure are Skeeve :))

Megaport will launch in NZ by Friday of this week at The Data Centre with Datacom coming on line in the following weeks. We're excited to enable Auckland as part of our Australian network. Megaport users can now Virtual Cross Connect between Auckland and our national network of data centres – giving access to global cloud and content on one platform.

To celebrate, we have a couple of launch offers:

1x 10G Port at The Data Centre free for the first 2 months or sign up for Auckland and Sydney and receive 100MB protected capacity for free for 3 months.

Sign up here http://www.megaport.com/nz/

Feel free to contact me off list for more information

MG

From: Skeeve Stevens Date: Tuesday, 11 November 2014 5:00 pm To: Alexander Neilson Cc: nznog Subject: Re: [nznog] New IXs in NZ - discussion

One thing I would expect from both of the new players is a free ramp up period for it to become useful.

That's what Megaport did in Australia, but we will see if Vibe extends that.

I would assume IX.A would also do something similar to gain traction.

...Skeeve

*Skeeve Stevens - *eintellego Networks Pty Ltd skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz ; www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz

Phone: +612 8014 7398; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve

facebook.com/eintellegonetworks ; linkedin.com/in/skeeve

twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.com

The Experts Who The Experts Call Juniper - Cisco - Cloud - Consulting - IPv4 Brokering

On 12 November 2014 08:31, Alexander Neilson wrote:

...
One of the things from our side of this is we are currently getting a reasonably good service from APE and they are directly available to us (SkyTower)

I found the Megaport launch announcement very interesting and while some clarity around the pricing details was made I am very interested in seeing how things come out in the wash. The VxC may be helpful re my IX Australia (maybe they will have a name change now) points below but also I am very interested in seeing how this may impact the market. Could be very interesting if we got content providers directly peering to these IX’s over Megaport connections (Using their Australian POPs but linking into the NZ Megaport IX so if you came onto the Megaport IX Offering then the providers had already brought themselves to our doors). This is one thing I will be monitoring as our traffic volumes are high enough for direct peering with some of the large content players but only if we are at the same facility. This could allow us to long line that.

For IX Australia’s new IX Its only available at 220 Queen (we can get Megaport VxC for that) but we are not in there yet so until it gets a little bit of sign up I can’t get money for us to join in (but again thanks to Megaport not requiring long terms on links much easier to get approval for it)

So very exciting times for everyone and would be great if people would be willing to let us on list know who is bringing connections into it (content or eyeball) so that those of us very small fish in (relatively) small pond worldwide can look at our priorities for connecting (where I should fight the strongest for first)

Thank you Tim for your insights.

Regards Alexander

Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Limited

alexander(a)neilson.net.nz 021 329 681 022 456 2326

On 12/11/2014, at 10:18 am, Tim Hoffman wrote:

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

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing listNZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nzhttp://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

Alexander Neilson

3:24 a.m.

IX.A already announced they doing free ports at the moment. But they only at 220 queen so for those in there it's easier But that's where the Megaport flexible options come into play where we can get across there without a long term lock-in. Regards Alexander Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Ltd Alexander(a)Neilson.net.nz 021 329 681

...

On 12/11/2014, at 11:00 am, Skeeve Stevens wrote:

One thing I would expect from both of the new players is a free ramp up period for it to become useful.

That's what Megaport did in Australia, but we will see if Vibe extends that.

I would assume IX.A would also do something similar to gain traction.

...Skeeve

Skeeve Stevens - eintellego Networks Pty Ltd skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz ; www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz Phone: +612 8014 7398; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve facebook.com/eintellegonetworks ; linkedin.com/in/skeeve twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.com

The Experts Who The Experts Call Juniper - Cisco - Cloud - Consulting - IPv4 Brokering

...
On 12 November 2014 08:31, Alexander Neilson wrote: One of the things from our side of this is we are currently getting a reasonably good service from APE and they are directly available to us (SkyTower)

I found the Megaport launch announcement very interesting and while some clarity around the pricing details was made I am very interested in seeing how things come out in the wash. The VxC may be helpful re my IX Australia (maybe they will have a name change now) points below but also I am very interested in seeing how this may impact the market. Could be very interesting if we got content providers directly peering to these IX’s over Megaport connections (Using their Australian POPs but linking into the NZ Megaport IX so if you came onto the Megaport IX Offering then the providers had already brought themselves to our doors). This is one thing I will be monitoring as our traffic volumes are high enough for direct peering with some of the large content players but only if we are at the same facility. This could allow us to long line that.

For IX Australia’s new IX Its only available at 220 Queen (we can get Megaport VxC for that) but we are not in there yet so until it gets a little bit of sign up I can’t get money for us to join in (but again thanks to Megaport not requiring long terms on links much easier to get approval for it)

So very exciting times for everyone and would be great if people would be willing to let us on list know who is bringing connections into it (content or eyeball) so that those of us very small fish in (relatively) small pond worldwide can look at our priorities for connecting (where I should fight the strongest for first)

Thank you Tim for your insights.

Regards Alexander

Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Limited

alexander(a)neilson.net.nz 021 329 681 022 456 2326

...
On 12/11/2014, at 10:18 am, Tim Hoffman wrote:

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

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Joe Wooller

4:26 a.m.

Hi All, We are offering a 6 month “trial/test” period for anyone wishing to connect up. After this if you wish to stay on there is no contract term, only monthly. We are currently looking at options to build out to the Vocus DC in Albany and SkyTower. Regards Joe

...

On 12 Nov 2014, at 6:24 am, Alexander Neilson wrote:

IX.A already announced they doing free ports at the moment. But they only at 220 queen so for those in there it's easier

But that's where the Megaport flexible options come into play where we can get across there without a long term lock-in.

Regards

Alexander

Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Ltd Alexander(a)Neilson.net.nz mailto:Alexander(a)Neilson.net.nz 021 329 681

On 12/11/2014, at 11:00 am, Skeeve Stevens mailto:skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz> wrote:

...
One thing I would expect from both of the new players is a free ramp up period for it to become useful.

That's what Megaport did in Australia, but we will see if Vibe extends that.

I would assume IX.A would also do something similar to gain traction.

...Skeeve

Skeeve Stevens - eintellego Networks Pty Ltd skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz mailto:skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz ; www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz http://www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz/ Phone: +612 8014 7398; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve <> facebook.com/eintellegonetworks http://facebook.com/eintellegonetworks ; http://twitter.com/networkceoaulinkedin.com/in/skeeve http://linkedin.com/in/skeeve twitter.com/theispguy http://twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.com http://www.theispguy.com/

The Experts Who The Experts Call Juniper - Cisco - Cloud - Consulting - IPv4 Brokering

On 12 November 2014 08:31, Alexander Neilson mailto:alexander(a)neilson.net.nz> wrote: One of the things from our side of this is we are currently getting a reasonably good service from APE and they are directly available to us (SkyTower)

I found the Megaport launch announcement very interesting and while some clarity around the pricing details was made I am very interested in seeing how things come out in the wash. The VxC may be helpful re my IX Australia (maybe they will have a name change now) points below but also I am very interested in seeing how this may impact the market. Could be very interesting if we got content providers directly peering to these IX’s over Megaport connections (Using their Australian POPs but linking into the NZ Megaport IX so if you came onto the Megaport IX Offering then the providers had already brought themselves to our doors). This is one thing I will be monitoring as our traffic volumes are high enough for direct peering with some of the large content players but only if we are at the same facility. This could allow us to long line that.

For IX Australia’s new IX Its only available at 220 Queen (we can get Megaport VxC for that) but we are not in there yet so until it gets a little bit of sign up I can’t get money for us to join in (but again thanks to Megaport not requiring long terms on links much easier to get approval for it)

So very exciting times for everyone and would be great if people would be willing to let us on list know who is bringing connections into it (content or eyeball) so that those of us very small fish in (relatively) small pond worldwide can look at our priorities for connecting (where I should fight the strongest for first)

Thank you Tim for your insights.

Regards Alexander

Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Limited

alexander(a)neilson.net.nz mailto:alexander(a)neilson.net.nz 021 329 681 022 456 2326

...
On 12/11/2014, at 10:18 am, Tim Hoffman mailto:tim(a)hoffman.net.nz> wrote:

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 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

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz mailto:NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

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Skeeve Stevens

5:49 a.m.

Awesome to hear Joe! ...Skeeve *Skeeve Stevens - *eintellego Networks Pty Ltd skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz ; www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz Phone: +612 8014 7398; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve facebook.com/eintellegonetworks ; http://twitter.com/networkceoau linkedin.com/in/skeeve twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.com The Experts Who The Experts Call Juniper - Cisco - Cloud - Consulting - IPv4 Brokering On 12 November 2014 10:26, Joe Wooller wrote:

...

Hi All,

We are offering a 6 month “trial/test” period for anyone wishing to connect up. After this if you wish to stay on there is no contract term, only monthly. We are currently looking at options to build out to the Vocus DC in Albany and SkyTower.

Regards Joe

On 12 Nov 2014, at 6:24 am, Alexander Neilson wrote:

IX.A already announced they doing free ports at the moment. But they only at 220 queen so for those in there it's easier

But that's where the Megaport flexible options come into play where we can get across there without a long term lock-in.

Regards

Alexander

Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Ltd Alexander(a)Neilson.net.nz 021 329 681

On 12/11/2014, at 11:00 am, Skeeve Stevens < skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz> wrote:

One thing I would expect from both of the new players is a free ramp up period for it to become useful.

That's what Megaport did in Australia, but we will see if Vibe extends that.

I would assume IX.A would also do something similar to gain traction.

...Skeeve

*Skeeve Stevens - *eintellego Networks Pty Ltd skeeve(a)eintellegonetworks.co.nz ; www.eintellegonetworks.co.nz Phone: +612 8014 7398; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve facebook.com/eintellegonetworks ; http://twitter.com/networkceoau linkedin.com/in/skeeve twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.com

The Experts Who The Experts Call Juniper - Cisco - Cloud - Consulting - IPv4 Brokering

On 12 November 2014 08:31, Alexander Neilson wrote:

...
One of the things from our side of this is we are currently getting a reasonably good service from APE and they are directly available to us (SkyTower)

I found the Megaport launch announcement very interesting and while some clarity around the pricing details was made I am very interested in seeing how things come out in the wash. The VxC may be helpful re my IX Australia (maybe they will have a name change now) points below but also I am very interested in seeing how this may impact the market. Could be very interesting if we got content providers directly peering to these IX’s over Megaport connections (Using their Australian POPs but linking into the NZ Megaport IX so if you came onto the Megaport IX Offering then the providers had already brought themselves to our doors). This is one thing I will be monitoring as our traffic volumes are high enough for direct peering with some of the large content players but only if we are at the same facility. This could allow us to long line that.

For IX Australia’s new IX Its only available at 220 Queen (we can get Megaport VxC for that) but we are not in there yet so until it gets a little bit of sign up I can’t get money for us to join in (but again thanks to Megaport not requiring long terms on links much easier to get approval for it)

So very exciting times for everyone and would be great if people would be willing to let us on list know who is bringing connections into it (content or eyeball) so that those of us very small fish in (relatively) small pond worldwide can look at our priorities for connecting (where I should fight the strongest for first)

Thank you Tim for your insights.

Regards Alexander

Alexander Neilson Neilson Productions Limited

alexander(a)neilson.net.nz 021 329 681 022 456 2326

On 12/11/2014, at 10:18 am, Tim Hoffman wrote:

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

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

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Lin Nah

6:15 a.m.

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

Tim Hoffman

7:11 a.m.

Lin, all, 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 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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Dave Mill

12 Nov 12 Nov

1:31 a.m.

Hi all We are AS17705. A regional ISP outside of Auckland and Wellington. We’ve traditionally always peered at APE and WIX. However, due to costs and other reasons lately we’re debating how our money is best spent on peering in general. We’re in the process of moving out of some locations in Auckland and into 220 Queen St. Due to this we’re evaluating our options. Note, we also receive all APE and WIX routes from a transit provider on a virtually empty pipe plus they advertise our routes to those IXes for us. What I’d have to say right now is we would be sensible to be on APE - though maybe on a short term contract. I think WIX just isn’t worth the money when we have alternate ways to/from all WIX peers already - sorry Wellington! To me, the promise of AKL-IX sounds really good. I’ll be actively connecting and have already requested the fibre tie to be installed between our racks. The pricing if we continue after the free trial looks good compared to other offerings here in NZ - especially the 10G pricing. As to whether commercial discussion of peering exchanges is on topic for a list like NZNOG I’d have to say it really has to be. Open peering is something I think the majority here will agree is a core value of NZNOG. But commercials involved in peering are a fact of life. And it seems that in late 2014 the commercials in NZ are changing a whole lot. Cheers Dave On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 3:11 PM, Tim Hoffman wrote:

...

Lin, all,

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 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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Ewen McNeill

1:52 a.m.

On 13/11/14 9:31, Dave Mill wrote:

...

[...] I think WIX just isn’t worth the money when we have alternate ways to/from all WIX peers already - sorry Wellington! [And "home base" is outside Wellington]

As someone based in Wellington, I'd like to note that the ability to get traffic from one location in Wellington to another location in Wellington, without paying an 1800km speed-of-light penalty (ie, round trip to/from Auckland) is definitely a consideration in ISP choice. (It's particularly noticeable when doing interactive work, especially as the intercity links get more congested and there's some packet loss.) In your (Dave's) case, as a practical matter it seems to me there's little practical difference (for users) between "buying inter-city layer 2 to be on WIX" and "buying layer 3 transit which includes advertising onto WIX" -- assuming adequate capacity available (which it sounds like you have). But much as I understand why "most" of the peering in New Zealand happens in Auckland, and as Tim points out most CDN/content providers are going to locate in Auckland if they're in the country at all -- and applaud them doing so, as Auckland is noticeably closer than Sydney! -- I also think it'd be unfortunate if Auckland were to become the _only_ place where traffic was exchanged. Both from a latency point of view (3000km round trips, from eg, down the South Island to Auckland, is even worse than Wellington), and also from an equality-of-opportunity point of view: if all traffic is exchanged in Auckland, any ISP (and potentially customer) based outside of Auckland is at a disadvantage in needing to buy more expensive backhaul to their base. So... geographically it seems inevitable that most traffic will be exchanged in Auckland. But I'd still like to encourage exchanges outside of Auckland. And ISPs to have some presence on them -- even if it's just a layer 3 "all exchanges" transit product, where it doesn't make sense to be there "at layer 2" (colo, or dedicated backhaul bandwidth). Ewen

Tim Hoffman

2:23 a.m.

Ewen,

...

On Nov 12, 2014, at 12:52 PM, Ewen McNeill wrote:

On 13/11/14 9:31, Dave Mill wrote:

...
[...] I think WIX just isn’t worth the money when we have alternate ways to/from all WIX peers already - sorry Wellington! [And "home base" is outside Wellington]

As someone based in Wellington, I'd like to note that the ability to get traffic from one location in Wellington to another location in Wellington, without paying an 1800km speed-of-light penalty (ie, round trip to/from Auckland) is definitely a consideration in ISP choice. (It's particularly noticeable when doing interactive work, especially as the intercity links get more congested and there's some packet loss.) Agreed, and it would be disappointing if the WIX was abandoned by New Zealand ISPs for sure. It’s important to have that there, not least of which because we’ve seen NZ get segmented between Wellington and Auckland on at least one provider due to multiple cable cuts in the last decade.

...

In your (Dave's) case, as a practical matter it seems to me there's little practical difference (for users) between "buying inter-city layer 2 to be on WIX" and "buying layer 3 transit which includes advertising onto WIX" -- assuming adequate capacity available (which it sounds like you have). As we all know, the BGP path selection process places some weight on as-path length, so it be interesting to see how that does work out - I suspect (particularly with bi-lats, which most providers prefer over route-server learned routes), a bit of engineering will be required to ensure balancing between the two points is correctly done. So I’m not sure that l2/l3 to these IXs is necessarily same/same.

...

But much as I understand why "most" of the peering in New Zealand happens in Auckland, and as Tim points out most CDN/content providers are going to locate in Auckland if they're in the country at all -- and applaud them doing so, as Auckland is noticeably closer than Sydney! -- I also think it'd be unfortunate if Auckland were to become the _only_ place where traffic was exchanged. Absolutely. I think we have to view WIX as a place for NZ content/ISPs to be, vs APE/AKL-IX/MegaportAKL as the place for both exchange of traffic between providers + access to content. And yes - we must remember that this is a massive improvement over Sydney!

Having said this, there are many locations with far more users than the population of NZ in the US which are further from most content than Christchurch is from Auckland, so it’s important to remember that even if we do get some level of tromboning up to Auckland, it’s not _that_ bad :).

...

Both from a latency point of view (3000km round trips, from eg, down the South Island to Auckland, is even worse than Wellington), and also from an equality-of-opportunity point of view: if all traffic is exchanged in Auckland, any ISP (and potentially customer) based outside of Auckland is at a disadvantage in needing to buy more expensive backhaul to their base. This is an interesting point. I wonder if there are any regional ISPs on list (particularly in the South Island) who could comment on how materially this actually affects their business models?

...

So... geographically it seems inevitable that most traffic will be exchanged in Auckland. But I'd still like to encourage exchanges outside of Auckland. And ISPs to have some presence on them -- even if it's just a layer 3 "all exchanges" transit product, where it doesn't make sense to be there "at layer 2" (colo, or dedicated backhaul bandwidth). Agreed. And if this is the outcome we get to, with good redundancy regionally in New Zealand, plus good redundancy across multiple IXs in Auckland to the content, we’ve done well :).

—Hoff

...

Ewen

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Erin Salmon

3:20 a.m.

Hi all, On Wed, 2014-11-12 at 13:23 -0800, Tim Hoffman wrote:

...

Agreed, and it would be disappointing if the WIX was abandoned by New Zealand ISPs for sure. It’s important to have that there, not least of which because we’ve seen NZ get segmented between Wellington and Auckland on at least one provider due to multiple cable cuts in the last decade.

+1. I'm all for a second IXP in Auckland, but while peering at both might save you from faults with APE, it helps not when the volcanic field gets its game on. And, as Tim says, the country does get partitioned from time to time. I'm all for WIX retaining significance. As an extension of the cable-cut issue, it happens in the deep south alarmingly often, with very wide reaching consequences due to the lesser diversity that exists down that way, and the tendency for operators to get by with less. It would arguably be better that the dominant non-AKL exchange were south of Cook Straight, but this seems unlikely to come about.

...

...
Both from a latency point of view (3000km round trips, from eg, down the South Island to Auckland, is even worse than Wellington), and also from an equality-of-opportunity point of view: if all traffic is exchanged in Auckland, any ISP (and potentially customer) based outside of Auckland is at a disadvantage in needing to buy more expensive backhaul to their base. This is an interesting point. I wonder if there are any regional ISPs on list (particularly in the South Island) who could comment on how materially this actually affects their business models?

Speaking as one until recently operating a Christchurch-centric network which peered in AKL, WLG and CHC, I found that (business) customers expected you to keep local traffic local. Some "on general principles", but there were enough willing to pay accordingly. It is certainly true that it costs more to deliver internet access in the South Island. Backhaul is getting cheaper, but it ain't free, and volumes are of course going the other way. All the content is up north, where the rest of the world lives. ;) Peering locally used to make a larger dent in the backhaul bill, but as has been noted, CDNs are on the rise and there are virtually none outside Auckland. At this point, peering locally is more about optimisations for high value customers, and resiliency. I'd speculate that a consumer-oriented network would see very little value in anything outside of Auckland. That said, two IXPs in Auckland makes very good sense. Digested: Two in Auckland, one somewhere else please! Cheers, Erin

Richard Naylor

4:30 a.m.

Commenting as someone with a little exposure to both IXs and CDNs At 09:52 a.m. 13/11/2014, Ewen McNeill wrote:

...

As someone based in Wellington, I'd like to note that the ability to get traffic from one location in Wellington to another location in Wellington, without paying an 1800km speed-of-light penalty (ie, round trip to/from Auckland) is definitely a consideration in ISP choice. (It's particularly noticeable when doing interactive work, especially as the intercity links get more congested and there's some packet loss.)

That was the primary aim of WIX - local traffic. Brian Reid from DEC described networks as the canals of the modern era and IXs as the Market Square. I haven't checked for a while, but looking at APE and WIX, WIX used to have the greater number of peers, the biggest number were non-network operators. So that means they're probably not visible to ISPs. But for B2B traffic WIX is huge. Any one noticed there aren't as many cycle-couriers as there used to be ? When at CityLink we did try and build a lot more regional IXs - not for ISP traffic but for local business traffic. Part of the "survey" was to walk the streets of a town and look at the businesses. The recent economic discussion about regional NZ shows why regional IXs haven't been a big success. Places I looked at were CHC Nelson Masterton Wanganui Levin Hastings/Napier So for most regional towns and cities, they will be consumers of content, rather than generators. With CDNs, over the past few years I have changed how I work. I moved off NZ based CDNs as they are too small and the peering issues weren't going to be addressed. I now use one of the big 4-5, with POPs in 40+ locations globally. This is for a number of reasons. I need multiple ingest points I need world class stats and support I need world class services I have a global audience. As an observation, for On-demand content, NZ is about 50% of the audience or less, for an average month. For live content we always get an international audience - it used to be 10% but is nearer 20% now and the number of countries is large. 50 is not unusual We also have to produce more bit rates and formats. So we analyse the connecting device and have player pages for all of them. Netflix do this well and on average produce around 30 versions of each movie. For live, I'm generally producing anywhere from 10 to 20 different bit-rates/versions/formats for each programme feed. We do use cloud processing as well, and also cloud based signal routing. We hand pick the best data centers for this based on their physical and network location. The aim is reducing IP hop count and congested areas. More IXs will be interesting. From an ISP point of view it may have some advantages. From a producers point of view, I note the CDNs are often in more than one IX in a city/region. My interest is in the CDN operators being in as many global locations as possible. I still run servers in NZ and they peer on WIX. They don't need to as all the content comes off the CDN now. My servers are mainly for signal routing now. But please be aware IXs are not just for ISPs. There was a group that was looking at VoIP peering. Sadly it went nowhere. When WIX was first looked at (1997-98) it was Wellington Information Exchange and we looked at ATM switches so we could have E1 peering - for phones and video. Alan Dempster (dec) and John Heard, will remember this. Richard

Jamie Baddeley

8:53 a.m.

Hi Guys, Yes, there’s been some new developments. Yes there’s been some discussion on the relative pricing, and Yes what is on offer is different. I think the biggest thing that makes the APE or the WIX different in particular is that it has and always will be a highly distributed IXP. Back in the day when Simon Blake and Richard Naylor and co set it up it was lauded as the first distributed IXP in the world. Kudos to them. We’ve been busy making that clearer showing how distributed it is. Take a look here: http://ape.nzix.net/ and http://wix.nzix.net/ - collectively, around 24 Datacentres and 570 buildings over 2 main Cities. You don’t need to go far to get an NZIX connection. Diversity is good because that protects against risk. But the flip side of diversity taken too far is complexity and cost. Back in the day when I was at FX we spent a lot of time engineering routing policy and wrestling with BGP to influence traffic flows to the right place. The amount of time we spent wrestling with it was basically proportional to the number of interconnection points we had. So there is a balance to strike. I know the Citylink guys spent a lot of time thinking about the prices for the NZIX connections and they cross referenced data from around the world, taking into account commercial IXP operators (mainly prevalent in the US) and not for profit IXP operators (mainly in Europe) and how they priced. They sought to arrive at the middle ground price point (in a global sense), and didn’t price the premium of a highly distributed IXP in - so that really is added value. Yes you could say NZ is tiny with respect to the Global pricing reference, but in the grand scheme of things so is the actual price point for an IXP connection. It is not a big number and I’m a little bemused over what appears to be 3 companies fighting over one of the smaller parts of the pie and giving it away to get there. I for one welcome our new Australian IXP overlords. One thing we’ve learnt about the peering game over the last decade or more is it’s those first 4 letters in the word. Peer. Colleague. Comrade. Accomplice. Buddy. Cohort. Partner. What matters in the peering world is trust and relationship. Citylink have been doing this for a long time. I’d imagine that some of you will elect to have both an NZIX connection and another one. But that does mean your total peering costs go up. As I said earlier, there is a price on diversity. I’d also imagine that some of you won’t change as others have mentioned - big content tends to turn up on all the exchanges. More on that later. Citylink have some announcements coming. Tim’s also mentioned that we're doing stuff with SDN on the IX. I’ve spoken about this at the NZNOG conference in the past (google will find the videos for you). We are still working on it. It has proven to be a lot more challenging than we anticipated, but we’re working furiously to get a working system ready for NZNOG in Rotorua so folks can carry out some interop tests and help us make it fit you guys - the peers - best.. So I hope to be able to lock that date in soon..Happy to take questions in the meantime. The Transtasman stuff is great. There’s so many ISP’s now that have direct TT connectivity. Snap, Vibe, Orcon, Vocus/FX etc etc. And many offer ethernet service over that. So there’s a plethora of choices at different layers and different topologies to choose from. Whether or not getting at that via an IXP based relationship makes sense to to you is something I’d like to hear more about. Similar issue with Intercity BW. Anyway, enough from me. Short version of all of this is that distributed exchange points over 2 major cities, 24 Datacentres and 570 buildings is still the most awesome IMHO. That’s what you get with NZIX. Oh and Hamilton and Christchurch too. Beer. Jamie On 12 November 2014 10:18, Tim Hoffman wrote:

...

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

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Ben

10:34 a.m.

On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 01:18:02PM -0800, Tim Hoffman wrote:

...

All, Wea**ve had some interesting announcements of Megaport and IX Australia building internet exchanges into NZ over the last week or so. Ia**ve been a bit surprised at how little chatter there has been around this on the list. I thought Ia**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 ya**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

To my mind anything that brings about this happening more is good.

...

3/ Trans-tasman capacity isna**t hugely expensive

But for US content it's better if connecting directly to the US rather than bouncing via Australia.

...

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. Ita**s a hard business case to get a POP there as a content provider. Content

Yeah.

...

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, youa**re going to have to get it in Auckland.

Yes.

...

Networks have outages, planned works, etc. So assuming that most of NZa**s interesting content is in Auckland (with a bit more over the Tasman, which isna**t too expensive to get to these days), it makes sense to have multiple (redundantly built and managed) ways of getting at this content. Ita**s interesting looking at the differences between the 3 IXs wea**re about to have. * Citylink, who have the critical mass of all the peers, are in the most locations, and are the most expensive. Theya**ve also got a product set around metro ethernet, dark fibre, and have a CDN running. And theya**re doing some interesting things around a a**SDN driven IXa**.

Do content providers care about that part?

...

* Megaport, who have placed huge focus on their a**Virtual Cross Connecta** product and being able to configure this on the fly, but also have run a pretty successful IX.

To my mind - if we can get US providers to get a cross connect from California back to New Zealand running all their transit back to the US through this cross connect and have both their local peering and cross-connect for transit die at the same time that's a good thing. A while ago Valve/Steam kept dropping out on Highwinds who they connected to Telstra and Megaport with. If you had a forward route or a reverse route it would break for a significant duration. (slow BGP full table loads?) And if one of the paths went over Equinix that they directly connected with either having issues could create an issue. When there are assymetric paths and slow BGP failover times failover times can be much to long for interactive users.

...

* IX Australia, who are very IX focused, and have gone to great pains to ensure that thata**s their only product, making them the most a**independenta**. 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 dunno if it really helps that much. It's more important how much each network does over a peering exchange than the grand total.

...

I suspect youa**re going to find that most of the content will try to get to all 3. Ita**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

Well last I knew Valve still hadn't gotten onto Megaport directly. I would like to see Valve peering in New Zealand too myself. I think that once you say that someone should have multiple upstream transit providers and multiple peering links it makes the idea of getting onboard less attractive. And then you have to host gear remotely somewhere as well, and get cross connects. Having a simple redundant port setup, with onsite remote hands is a lot more attractive than having external contractors and gear somewhere like the sky tower.

...

reliantly over peering, and then transit the rest if it has to happen. It would be disappointing if we didna**t see the top 5-6 IXs + all the content providers on all of them. Also ita**ll be important to ensure that the result isna**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.

...

From that point of view there's a few people on APE already - and having a second exchange would create redundancy. I think that redundancy is more important for local content than remote content. But it seems like it's pushing it to have 3 exchanges rather than 2.

Coresite having the split exchange between Los Angeles and San Jose is akin to having shared fabric between Wellington and Auckland, and although it simplifys and gets the number of peers up I think something less seemless would be better. In New Zealand all international goes out Auckland anyway, so it's normal to have transit from Wellington to Auckland, and less demand in the other direction.

...

For the community, having this competition is going to be a win. It wona**t kill APE, which has huge critical mass, and has done a great job in ita**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.

Well what keeps popping into my head is that Telecom still don't peer, and that the US has had considerable peering issues recently. Any with the US recently changing daylight savings and California only being 3 hours ahead of us (well 21 behind) it pushes us closer to US peak time. It doesn't seem like the larger ISP's in the US want to improve quality, and instead want to charge for people to send them content. And I don't think that New Zealand is immune from these issues, and I wouldn't be surprised when more NZ content does turn up if we're going to run into more significant issues with basic Skype calls etc. If content providers did have peering in NZ, and a connect back to the US, then they'd still have to either pay Telecom to send to them, or to pay some other provider to send to Telecom, .. and if they pay some other provider, and that other provider oversubscribes (like Cogent did) then normal users doing normal peer to peer activity could be disrupted too. Which to my mind is worse than some user having buffering on something like Netflix etc. Ben.

Andrew Jones

11:18 a.m.

On 13.11.2014 16:34, Ben wrote: -SNIP-

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* IX Australia, who are very IX focused, and have gone to great pains to ensure that thata**s their only product, making them the most a**independenta**. 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 dunno if it really helps that much. It's more important how much each network does over a peering exchange than the grand total.

http://monitor.nsw.ix.asn.au/cacti/graph_view.php -SNIP-

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Alexander Neilson
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NOC ＠ NGW
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