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AN INSIGHT INTO THE WORLD OF INTERNET EXCHANGES

ALNOG – Albanian Network Operators’ Group

TIRANA, 14th November 2018

Flavio Luciani – f.luciani@namex.itChief Innovation Officer

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DEFINITIONS – AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS

• What we call “The Internet” is actually an interconnection of autonomous, independent networks. We call them Autonomous Systems (RFC1930).

• ASes host end users on their network and give connectivity to them

• ASes can have other ASes as customers to whom they provide connectivity

• ASes host IP content resources on their network: web, media, mail servers, news, etc. AS

24796AS

24796

AS 137AS 137 AS 174AS 174

AS 20940AS 20940

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DEFINITIONS - RELATIONSHIPS

• Autonomous Systems need to interconnect in order to mutually share their resources and to enable customers to reach each other

• Interconnections can be of two types:

• Transit interconnection: an AS provides another AS with access (transit) to the global Internet

• Peering interconnection: two ASes interconnect each other and mutually exchange their resources

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DEFINITIONS – TRANSIT RELATIONSHIP

AS 1AS 1

AS 2AS 2

AS 3AS 3

AS 4AS 4

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• Although necessary for global connectivity, transit has its own inconveniences:

• Transit can have higher economical costs for customer ASes

• Transit can have high performance costs in terms of round-trip time

• Transit gives no way for customer AS to influence the way its traffic goes around the Internet

• Local communications between “close” ASes are penalized by transit

DEFINITIONS – TRANSIT RELATIONSHIP

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DEFINITIONS – PEERING RELATIONSHIP

AS 1AS 1

AS 2AS 2

AS 3AS 3

AS 4AS 4

DIRECT PEERING INTERCONNECTION

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8• Direct peering introduces some benefits over a hierarchically tiered organization:

• Peering is a mutual agreement between peers

• Round-trip times are dramatically reduced

• Local communications, local traffic exchange is improved

• Peering is quite always for free

DEFINITIONS – PEERING RELATIONSHIP

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WHY PEER?

• Consider a country with one ISP• Provides internet connectivity to its customers • Has one or two international connections

• Internet grows, another ISP sets up in competition• Provides internet connectivity to its customers • Has one or two international connections

• How does traffic from customer of one ISP get to customer of the other ISP?

• Via the international connections

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WHY PEER?

• Solution: • Two competing ISPs peer with each other

• Result:• Both save money • Local traffic stays local • Better network performances (< hops)

• A third ISP enters the equation• The third ISP now agree to peer with the two other ISPs • Private peering means that the three ISPs have to buy circuits

between each other • does not scale

• Solution: Internet eXchange Point• Every participant has to buy just one whole circuit

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INTERNET EXCHANGE POINTS

INTERNET EXCHANGE

AS 20940

AS 20940

AS 174AS 174

AS 137AS 137

AS 2479

6

AS 2479

6

AS 5396

AS 5396

AS 5396

AS 5396

FASTER PATH THROUGH IXP

SLOWER PATH THROUGH UP

• Internet exchange points provide a neutral facility where ASes can converge to setup their peering relationships

• An IXP allows ISPs to interconnect their ASes directly, i.e. to establish peerings between them, rather than through a third-party network (upstream)

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INTERNET EXCHANGE POINTS

• An IXP is a component of the Internet ecosystem that can increase the affordability and quality of the Internet for local communities

• An IXP is the physical infrastructure through which Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers (CPs) exchange Internet traffic between their networks

IXP

ISP1 - AS1 ISP3 – AS3

ISP2 – AS2

ISP4 – AS4

ISP5 – AS5

ISP6 – AS6

ISP7 – AS7

ISP8 – AS8

I-BGP

I-BGP

I-BGP

I-BGP

I-BGP

I-BGP

I-BGP

I-BGP

R1

E-BGP

E-BGP

E-BGP

E-BGP

E-BGP

E-BGP

E-BGP

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IXP ADVANTAGES

• Keeps domestic traffic within a country/region without having to take indirect international route

• Improves throughput and latency performance, which empower Internet for all interactive applications

• Improves the routing efficiency, by increasing the number of possible “paths”

• Critical mass of ISPs in a single location creates local competitive market in provision of capacity, transit and services

• Increases of local economy: content is located where most end-users have best access to it (biggest bandwith and lowest latency)

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IXPS TOPOLOGY

• Centralized:• One location• Local interconnection between ISP’s equipment

• Distributed• More locations• Metropolitan interconnection between ISP’s equipment

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IXP SERVICES

• Common base services that can be offered by an IXP:• Shared switch infrastructure• Co-location• Route Server• Website/Webportal• Statistcs/Monitoring/Looking glass• Mailing list• Cabling infrastructure for PNI• OOB access

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IXP SERVICES: ROUTE SERVER

WHAT?

Route Servers (RS) provide support for the establishment of peering arrangements between IXP peers: theoretically, a single peering session replaces a complex full mesh BGP interconnectionWHY?

• Reach a lot of parties with just one BGP session

• Providing backup for direct peering session

• Preventing/Mitigating misconfigurations (hijacks)

• Easy entry point for new members to the exchange – immediate traffic

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IXP MEETINGS AND EVENTS

• Meetings/Workshop and events are useful to promote relationships between network operators (both admins and techies)

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WHO CAN JOIN AN IXP?

• Requirements are very simple: any organisation which operates their own autonomous network, and has:

• Their own address space• Their own AS number• Their own transit arrangements

• Usually IXPs publish a technical regulation where there are:

• rules for admission• Operating and technical rules

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IXPS IN EUROPE

• 197 known IXPs

• 48 country

• 146 cities

• EURO-IX• 82 members

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IXPS IN ITALY

• NAMEX – Roma

• MIX – Milano

• TOP-IX Torino

• VS-IX Padova

• More than 200 ASNs of small/medium ISPs connected at NAMEX, MIX, TOP-IX, VS-IX

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CASE STUDY:

• Neutral, non-profit, member-based

• 160 racks colocated, about 800 PNI

• 60Gbps publicly exchanged traffic

• Second largest IXP in Italy

• Website: https://www.namex.it

NEUTRAL COLOCATI

ON

NEUTRAL COLOCATI

ONPEERINGPEERING REMOTE

PEERINGREMOTE PEERING

SPACE&

POWER

SPACE&

POWER

MEET MEROOM

MEET MEROOM

REMOTEHANDSREMOTEHANDS

REMOTEIXP

REMOTEIXP

REMOTEAGGREGA

TION

REMOTEAGGREGA

TION

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CASE STUDY:

2005

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2014

2015

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0

40

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19 23 25 30 3244 50 53 54 58

70 7685

92

connected networks

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CASE STUDY:

• Colocation service• Inside its facilities, NAMEX provides housing space for network devices (L3/L2, ADM/

WDM):

• Footprints, full racks or rack slots (1/8, 1/4, 1/2) • Redundant 220VAC power supply (16A/32A) • Redundant cooling systems • Remote hands and H24 technical support • Environmental monitoring • Security: restricted access, surveillance, CCTV

• Meet-me room (MMR):

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CASE STUDY:

• Peering service• We support IP traffic exchange between members, based on the establishment of

peering relationship among border routers connected to a common switching platform

• Peering platform: Leaf-spine layout

• Supports multiple connectivity• 100/1000 Mbps Ethernet (fiber/copper) • 10 Gigabit Ethernet (fiber)• 40/100 Gigabit Ethernet (fiber)

• Public peering LAN and private peering LANs available

• Route servers

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NAMEX MEETING/COMMUNITY/ACTIVITIES

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THANKS!

ALNOG – Albanian Network Operators’ Group

TIRANA, 14th November 2018

Flavio Luciani – f.luciani@namex.itChief Innovation Officer