ICONZ Connects to Pacific IX

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freitasm

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# 78154 28-Feb-2011 16:16

Interesting times... From ICONZ:

ICONZ Connects to Pacific IX

As you may be aware, Vocus (our primary international transit provider) is introducing a new trans-Tasman peering service called PacificIX. This new service will provide a fabric across which parties in both New Zealand and Australia can connect to the same Layer 2 fabric, and exchange Layer 3 peering sessions.

We expect to be launching the PacificIX service from the 8th of March, as part of our continuous drive to improve services for our customers. We believe this will deliver some excellent improvements including:

• Lower latency times to hosts in Australia
• Potentially reduced utilization of (chargeable) international bandwidth
• Improved network redundancy

These benefits may take some time to flow through to customers as other providers sign on to PacificIX, but we believe they will grow over time as more key parties connect to the service.

Customers who source their IP address space from ICONZ will gain automatic use of this service from March 8th from launch. A fair use policy will be enforced, but there will not be any rating in place at this time.

Currently this service is not available to customers who provide their own IP address space. However, we will be offering the chance to participate following the launch.

Zeon

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# 444180 28-Feb-2011 16:37

Hmm yes very interesting. The port costs were something like $3000 a month for 100mbps from memory. The real question is though who is going to peer in Australia with this. Certainly not the "gang of four" lol they are worse than Telecom/Telstra here from what I hear.

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Chippo

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# 444223 28-Feb-2011 19:49

It's quite interesting actually, our home users are unlikely to see any difference at all except maybe a little improved performance to aussie at peak times. For our corporates though they should eventually see their data bills drop as traffic transits the exchange instead of the more expensive international transit points.

We're treating PacificIX internally the same way we treat APE/WIX. This means no shaping or per MB billing. We eventually expect our more clued-up customers pick Australian providers who are also members of PacificIX specifically to take advantage of the free transit over the tasman.

For now, Vocus are very hush-hush about who is ACTUALLY going to be on PacificIX. ICONZ won't know who we're going to be exchanging data with until other parties actually start peering with the route reflectors. We don't expect to see the big aussie telcos join any more than we'd expect to see TelstraClear or Telecom join here; But when you're paying for transit (Which we all are, ICONZ and our customers included) every packet counts.

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# 444297 28-Feb-2011 23:24

if it helps bring singapore closer, and hence microsoft online services closer, then - YAY. otherwise....

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Zeon

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# 444298 28-Feb-2011 23:37

Regs: if it helps bring singapore closer, and hence microsoft online services closer, then - YAY. otherwise....

Will most likely have no affect at all on this. It will be really useful if you have content you need to move back and forth between Aussie and NZ.

I don't understand why someone would sign up to the service without finding who peers there though...?

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# 444301 1-Mar-2011 00:07

Zeon:
Regs: if it helps bring singapore closer, and hence microsoft online services closer, then - YAY. otherwise....

Will most likely have no affect at all on this. It will be really useful if you have content you need to move back and forth between Aussie and NZ.

theoretically, it could. via my provider i see traffic destined for singapore either go via sydney, or via los angeles. the routing appears to be at the mercy of the transit provider (asianetcom). i'm sure there could be options to route traffic at the pacific IX with another peer to shorten the route to SIN.

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wjw

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# 444324 1-Mar-2011 08:49

Zeon:
Regs: if it helps bring singapore closer, and hence microsoft online services closer, then - YAY. otherwise....

Will most likely have no affect at all on this. It will be really useful if you have content you need to move back and forth between Aussie and NZ.

I don't understand why someone would sign up to the service without finding who peers there though...?

Someone has to take the risk. Thats how IX's grow. Considering what Vocus are charging and their discount offer, I would expect a high take up.

Zeon

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# 444325 1-Mar-2011 09:05

Regs:
Zeon:
Regs: if it helps bring singapore closer, and hence microsoft online services closer, then - YAY. otherwise....

Will most likely have no affect at all on this. It will be really useful if you have content you need to move back and forth between Aussie and NZ.

theoretically, it could. via my provider i see traffic destined for singapore either go via sydney, or via los angeles. the routing appears to be at the mercy of the transit provider (asianetcom). i'm sure there could be options to route traffic at the pacific IX with another peer to shorten the route to SIN.

Possibly but I'm not sure if they allow private peering across this link which is what would be needed for NZ peers to connect with Aussie transit providers. It's also best efforts so ISPs may be wary of using it as a transit route.

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Beccara

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# 444328 1-Mar-2011 09:10

They do allow private peering and also backhauling across it. Also all IX's are best effort

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muppet

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# 444330 1-Mar-2011 09:19

Beccara: They do allow private peering and also backhauling across it. Also all IX's are best effort

When we chatted with them over the phone, this is one of the things I couldn't believe. It's a really great service, though the terms can change in the future.

Zeon: Possibly but I'm not sure if they allow private peering across this link which is what would be needed for NZ peers to connect with Aussie transit providers. It's also best efforts so ISPs may be wary of using it as a transit route.

The whole point of PacificIX is that if someone signs up in Australia, if you sign up in NZ you get access to whatever routes that ISP in Australia advertises, no private peering required. Or are you talking about using this as an access method to buy Intl' transit off Australian ISPs? You'd be nuts IMHO to do that, because as you've mentioned it's best effort.

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# 444353 1-Mar-2011 10:16

MLPE is optional I believe is optional as well (Not sure) It's S.O.P for major peering partners to have sessions outside of the RS's on a IX aswell

Beccara

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# 444369 1-Mar-2011 10:52

Zeon: Hmm yes very interesting. The port costs were something like $3000 a month for 100mbps from memory. The real question is though who is going to peer in Australia with this. Certainly not the "gang of four" lol they are worse than Telecom/Telstra here from what I hear.

It's not $3k/month either