No subject

Sat Jan 6 18:41:27 UTC 2001

      On Sat, 6 Jan 2001, Randy Bush wrote:

    > > Is a separate AS Number required for an Internet Xchange point network. 
    > 
    > almost all ixen are at layer two.  hence they have no ip addresses

To expand upon that a little, while an exchange point itself is usually a
layer-2 entity (that's a good thing), the ISPs which are exchanging
traffic across it need to assign IP addresses to their router ports which
are connected to it, and it's good to use a single common block of
addresses for that purpose, and manage them in such a way that the in-addr
DNS for the block provides useful information about which ISP they're
associated with, and contact info, and so forth.  IP addresses are
available for this purpose from Bill Manning, bmanning at ep.net, who also
provides a management infrastructure for registering the in-addr names and
contact information.

    > the ix provider may also choose to provide services on the side...
    > Like other routed networks, if they are multi-homed, they tend to
    > have their own asn.

One of the services that some exchange points choose to provide is a
route-server or "looking glass" which is a router which all or most of the
others peer with, and which either forwards routes between the other peers
(aggregating the routes into single peering sessions) or allows
participants to log in and see what routes other participants are or
should be offering.  As a BGP peer, this obviously needs an AS of its own.
Packet Clearing House, a research organization that I coordinate, offers
free route-servers to exchange points, and we also provide the AS number
for the route-servers.

Lastly, I do hope that you're seriously considering putting up an exchange
point in Sri Lanka and encourage you to do so...  Local and regional
exchanges are a great boon to improving the quality of the Internet, and
I'm sure that beyond Randy Bush, Bill Manning, and myself, who're involved
with assisting in new EP construction routinely, that you could expect
support, advice, and assistance from the rest of the networking community
generally.  Good luck!

                                -Bill