[*] CIRA statement on IXPs

[Dan Keizer]

CIRA must have been doing a road-show (or just getting out and touching
base with the communities)  -- Byron was also at the proposed Calgary
Internet Exchange, CIX, meeting on Friday last week (his talk is at 1hr09mn
in the meeting feed) .. which met at Calgary City Hall for a town-hall
meeting.  (He even mentioned a couple of his guys just got in from Winnipeg
discussing the same thing).

I listened to most of the discussion - you have to skip a few areas of dead
spots - but was interesting none-the-less to hear the discussion points.
Here's a (very) brief synopsis

In attendance were interested persons, a number of ISP's and content
providers such as google and akamai showed up...

Their town hall talk was setup here:
https://new.livestream.com/cybera-AB/cix-live-stream

Presenters - some I remember / recognize ...

Cybera - the Alberta network people
Google -  Sylvy
CIRA - Byron Holland
Blackbridge - colo
ISP's ...
City of Calgary
CNOC - commented it should be called A IX, not CIX -- how odd from a guy
who was on the TorIX board :-|
Akamai  - costs to meetup will determine success
OpenBSD rep - cost of connection to facility / fiber-runs etc. (even Theo
spoke later - interesting concept discussing the role of a pure exchange vs
a data-center with caches etc)

General topics:
Governance
Neutrality (not-for-profit), one member one vote, level playing field
Must have a need - not a mandate
Lower cost, lower latency, better end-user experience

Attracting transit providers, content providers
Hub/spoke concept - from central IX to neutral and for-profit
spokes/extensions
Next logical step
Reducing existing incumbents transit pricing

City of Calgary's older data center which is being decommissioned by the
city is one proposed as the new location for the CIX.  University of
Calgary is also offering facilities downtown to host the location.
(funny - pun on proximity to Fire Dept and that no fires occur in data
centers in downtown) :-)

City can lease hard-to-get dark-fiber for CIX purposes.

SLA's - usually best effort for IX's, not defined as five 9's. Typically
SLO's (service level objectives)
Some stats from recent study: 30% decrease in latency

Leveling the playing field, encouraging competition
Criteria to joining/becoming a member of an IX
Long term - IX will survive only if there are paying membership, which will
only pay if there is value.

Simili /comparison made - net connectivity vs automobile connectivity -
roads etc.  (similar to the toaster analogy) :-)

Dan.

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Bill Reid <billreid at shaw.ca> wrote:

> John, I agree that IX's are difficult to start in the existing environment
> and that is one of the reasons why there are so few. On the other hand it
> is not clear to me that a local IX is not beneficial. If an IX existed then
> it may affect how a business gets initially connected but this effect will
> not be apparent for at least 2 or 3 years. Creating a viable IX takes time
> and of course it may not happen. What CIRA has decided to do is kick start
> an IX so that it will become viable and organizations can make a business
> case to connect.
>
> Predicting the future in this Internet environment is very difficult. We
> all know of a number of technologies that sound great but fizzle out or
> morph over time in unexpected directions. For example VoIP did not develop
> the way I thought when I first got into it.
>
> I find it is interesting that the idea of MBIX started up in the fall and
> quite independently CIRA decided a few months later to push to increase the
> number of IX's in Canada. MBIX has the good fortune to be the first IX that
> CIRA is supporting and they are really committed to making it a success.
> For example the proposed Google and Akamai cache should enable an
> organization to offset local loop costs with lower transit costs.
>
> -- Bill
>
>
> On 14/09/12 14:09, John Lange wrote:
>
>> I'll resist rehashing all my previous poo-pooing of this idea, but it
>> comes down to one simple thing. Money. If there was any business case
>> for this, it would have happened already.
>>
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