Internet exchange point

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Internet exchange points (IXes or IXPs) are common grounds of

private peering
, where ISPs directly connect their networks to each other.

IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic that must be delivered via their

fault-tolerance. IXPs exhibit the characteristics of the network effect.[2]

History

NSFNet
Internet architecture, c. 1995

Internet exchange points began as Network Access Points or NAPs, a key component of

Pennsauken, New Jersey), Chicago, and California, respectively.[5]
As a transitional strategy, they were effective, providing a bridge from the Internet's beginnings as a government-funded academic experiment, to the modern Internet of many private-sector competitors collaborating to form a network-of-networks, transporting Internet bandwidth from its points-of-production at Internet exchange points to its sites-of-consumption at users' locations.

This transition was particularly timely, coming hard on the heels of the ANS CO+RE controversy,[6][7] which had disturbed the nascent industry, led to congressional hearings,[8] resulted in a law allowing NSF to promote and use networks that carry commercial traffic,[9] prompted a review of the administration of NSFNET by the NSF's Inspector General (no serious problems were found),[10] and caused commercial operators to realize that they needed to be able to communicate with each other independent of third parties or at neutral exchange points.

Although the three telco-operated NAPs faded into obscurity relatively quickly after the expiration of the federal subsidies, MAE-East, thrived for fifteen more years, and its west-coast counterpart MAE-West continued for more than twenty years.[11]

Today, the phrase "Network Access Point" is of historical interest only, since the four transitional NAPs disappeared long ago, replaced by hundreds of modern Internet exchange points, though in Spanish-speaking Latin America, the phrase lives on to a small degree, among those who conflate the NAPs with IXPs.[citation needed]

Function

Initial location of the London Internet Exchange (LINX): Telehouse Docklands

The primary purpose of an IXP is to allow networks to interconnect directly, via the exchange, rather than going through one or more third-party networks. The primary advantages of direct interconnection are cost,

latency, and bandwidth.[4]

Traffic passing through an exchange is typically not billed by any party, whereas traffic to an ISP's upstream provider is.[12] The direct interconnection, often located in the same city as both networks, avoids the need for data to travel to other cities—and potentially on other continents—to get from one network to another, thus reducing latency.[13]

The third advantage, speed, is most noticeable in areas that have poorly developed long-distance connections. ISPs in regions with poor connections might have to pay between 10 or 100 times more for data transport than ISPs in North America, Europe, or Japan. Therefore, these ISPs typically have slower, more limited connections to the rest of the Internet. However, a connection to a local IXP may allow them to transfer data without limit, and without cost, vastly improving the bandwidth between customers of such adjacent ISPs.[13]

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are public locations where several networks are connected to each other.[14][15] Public peering is done at IXPs, while private peering can be done with direct links between networks.[16][17]

Operations

Frankfurt
, Germany

Technical operations

A typical IXP consists of one or more

fiber-optic inter-repeater link (FOIRL) hubs or Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) rings, migrating to Ethernet
and FDDI switches as those became available in 1993 and 1994.

Gb/second ports in major centers like Seoul, New York, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Palo Alto. Ports with 100 Gb/second are available, for example, at the AMS-IX in Amsterdam and at the DE-CIX in Frankfurt.[citation needed
]

An optical fiber patch panel at the Amsterdam Internet Exchange

Business operations

The principal business and governance models for IXPs include:[13]

The technical and business logistics of traffic exchange between ISPs is governed by bilateral or multilateral peering agreements. Under such agreements, traffic is exchanged without compensation.[18] When an IXP incurs operating costs, they are typically shared among all of its participants.

At the more expensive exchanges, participants pay a monthly or annual fee, usually determined by the speed of the port or ports which they are using. Fees based on the volume of traffic are less common because they provide a counterincentive to the growth of the exchange. Some exchanges charge a setup fee to offset the costs of the switch port and any media adaptors (

small form-factor pluggable transceivers, XFP transceivers, XENPAKs
, etc.) that the new participant requires.

Traffic exchange

Diagram of the Layer 1 (physical) and Layer 2 (Data Link) topology of an Internet exchange point (IXP)
Diagram of the Layer 3 (network) topology of an Internet exchange point (IXP)

Internet traffic exchange between two participants on an IXP is facilitated by Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing configurations between them. They choose to announce routes via the peering relationship – either routes to their own addresses or routes to addresses of other ISPs that they connect to, possibly via other mechanisms. The other party to the peering can then apply route filtering, where it chooses to accept those routes, and route traffic accordingly, or to ignore those routes, and use other routes to reach those addresses.

In many cases, an ISP will have both a direct link to another ISP and accept a route (normally ignored) to the other ISP through the IXP; if the direct link fails, traffic will then start flowing over the IXP. In this way, the IXP acts as a backup link.

When these conditions are met, and a contractual structure exists to create a market to purchase network services, the IXP is sometimes called a "transit exchange". The Vancouver Transit Exchange, for example, is described as a "shopping mall" of service providers at one central location, making it easy to switch providers, "as simple as getting a VLAN to a new provider".[19] The VTE is run by BCNET, a public entity.

Advocates of green broadband schemes and more competitive telecommunications services often advocate aggressive expansion of transit exchanges into every municipal area network so that competing service providers can place such equipment as

PSTN
switches to serve existing phone equipment, without being answerable to any monopoly incumbent.

Since the dissolution of the Internet backbone and transition to the IXP system in 1992, the measurement of Internet traffic exchanged at IXPs has been the primary source of data about Internet bandwidth production: how it grows over time and where it is produced.[13] Standardized measures of bandwidth production have been in place since 1996[20] and have been refined over time.[21]

See also

References

  1. ^ "The Art of Peering - The IX Playbook". Archived from the original on 20 December 2017. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  2. ^ "Internet Service Providers and Peering v3.0". Archived from the original on 20 April 2015. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  3. ^ NSF Solicitation 93-52 Archived 2016-03-05 at the Wayback Machine - Network Access Point Manager, Routing Arbiter, Regional Network Providers, and Very High Speed Backbone Network Services Provider for NSFNET and the NREN(SM) Program, May 6, 1993
  4. ^ a b Woodcock, Bill (March 2001). "Prescriptive Policy Guide for Developing Nations Wishing to Encourage the Formation of a Domestic Internet Industry". Packet Clearing House. Archived from the original on 3 June 2021. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  5. ^ E-mail regarding Network Access Points from Steve Wolff (NSF) to the com-priv list Archived 2013-10-29 at the Wayback Machine, sent 13:51 EST 2 March 1994
  6. ^ "The Cook Report on the Internet". Archived from the original on 5 August 2021. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  7. ^ "A Critical Look at the University of Michigan's Role in the 1987 Merit Agreement" Archived 10 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine, Chetly Zarko in The Cook Report on the Internet, January 1995, pp. 9–17
  8. One Hundred Second Congress, Second Session, Hon. Rick Boucher
    , subcommittee chairman, presiding
  9. ^ Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act of 1992 Archived 5 July 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Public Law No: 102-476, 43 U.S.C. 1862(g)
  10. ^ Review of NSFNET Archived 6 July 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Office of the Inspector General, National Science Foundation, 23 March 1993
  11. ^ Garfinkel, Simson (11 September 1996). "Where Streams Converge" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 November 2021. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  12. SSRN 2128103
    .
  13. ^
    doi:10.1787/5k918gpt130q-en. Archived
    from the original on 10 August 2021. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  14. ISBN 978-0-08-047497-7
    .
  15. ISBN 978-0-08-047497-7
    .
  16. ISBN 978-4-274-99991-8
    .
  17. ISBN 978-3-030-34957-8
    .
  18. ^ Woodcock, Bill; Frigino, Marco (21 November 2016). "2016 Survey of Internet Carrier Interconnection Agreements" (PDF). Packet Clearing House. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 July 2021. Retrieved 11 November 2021. Of the agreements we analyzed, 1,935,111 (99.98%) had symmetric terms, in which each party gave and received the same conditions as the other. Only 403 (0.02%) had asymmetric terms, in which the parties gave and received conditions with specifically defined differences, and these exceptions were down from 0.27% in 2011. Typical examples of asymmetric agreements are ones in which one of the parties compensates the other for routes that it would not otherwise receive (sometimes called 'paid peering' or 'on-net routes'), or in which one party is required to meet terms or requirements imposed by the other ('minimum peering requirements'), often concerning volume of traffic or number or geographic distribution of interconnection locations. In the prevailing symmetric relationship, the parties to the agreement simply exchange customer routes with each other, without settlements or other requirements.
  19. ^ BCnet (4 June 2009). "Transit Exchange helps Novus Entertainment Save on Internet Costs and Improve Performance". How R&E networks can help small business. Bill St. Arnaud. Archived from the original on 21 August 2014. Retrieved 11 September 2012.
  20. ^ Claffy, Kimberly; Siegel, Dave; Woodcock, Bill (30 May 1996). "Standarized Format for Exchange Point Traffic Recording & Interchange". North American Network Operators Group. Archived from the original on 3 December 1998. Retrieved 27 October 2021.
  21. ^ Good Practices in Internet Exchange Point Documentation and Measurement. OECD. 26 April 2007. Archived from the original on 19 January 2022. Retrieved 27 October 2021.
  22. ^ "Euro-IX Website". European Internet Exchange. Archived from the original on 13 April 2015.

External links

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