Vancouver IXP - VanTX - BCNet

Fri Aug 23 17:30:46 UTC 2013

Bill, not true.

Following on our vision for Canada to have an IXP in every major city, specifically for Calgary, CIRA worked with CYBERA to organize a town hall meeting in Calgary, on September 14, 2013.  At the meeting, we had interested members of the community (Content delivery, ISP, government, R&E, CIRA, others) together to start the development of a new IXP in Calgary.

Cybera being local, they took the lead in working with the community members in setting up governance, technical architecture, location, etc...  CIRA actively participated in the various committees.    

CIRA is planning the deployment of equipment for the IXP, a .ca DNS Anycast stack, NTP servers and space for M-Lab nodes.  We also work with PCH to have a PCH anycast stack installed in Calgary.  We talked to Akamai and Google to be part of the Calgary IXP.  HE actually did build to Data Hive (Preferred data center in Calgary).  Doing our part in trying to get as much content, ISP, eyeballs, core internet services to be present at IXP.  The AlbertaIX is cash poor at that moment in time so CIRA was looking at options to fund equipment or provide start-up grants, nothing was done up to now with respect to providing equipment or funds.

Note: CIRA's job is not to go in and put a switch and leave.  CIRA works with the community to get the IXP up and running.  We have criteria to participate,  the IXP must be a member based, vendor neutral non-profit organization with a viable trusted community to operate and sustain an IXP.  CIRA is acting as a catalyst, not a doer. The community is the doer.  Ask the people in Winnipeg www.mbix.ca and Montreal qix.ca . We are planning the launch of mbix this September as well.  This is an example where the IXP build was successful.

Back to Calgary, something special occurred, while we were all working on setting up AlbertaIX (we started fast but the pace slowed down significantly), a new IXP came to 'life' YYCIX in Data Hive, yycix.ca.  Long story short, CIRA is waiting for things to settle before we continue providing more support and invest in deployment our .CA infrastructure.  When the "dust" settles, we will deploy our .ca infrastructure and be a member of the communities (peer).

There's a chance we're going to have two IXPs in Calgary, hopefully they would be in the same data center to leverage our investment,  if we have two, then it's going to make it confusing for the new potential peers to pick the right one or both.

All in all, CIRA's objective was to have 1 IXP in Calgary, we have one now, perhaps 2 in the future, so mission accomplished.  It's up to the community to get their act together (no pun intended), and if they need our help, then we're there to help with governance, funding, technical expertise, etc...

Also, we're doing our best with our limited resources,

Jack

(NOTE: English not my first language, if you're not sure what I mean, ask me, don't assume)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Reid [mailto:bill at mbix.ca]
> Sent: August-23-13 11:55 AM
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: Vancouver IXP - VanTX - BCNet
> 
> On 23/08/13 09:56, Mark Leonard wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 6:52 AM, Joe Abley <jabley at hopcount.ca> wrote:
> >
> >> What CIRA is doing is providing support in the areas where previous
> >> efforts have struggled, providing hardware, accounts payable, legal,
> >> help with incorporation and forming sensible bylaws and stimulating
> >> local discussion and interest. My perspective is that they have done
> >> a great job in Calgary and Montréal. It sounds like the approach in
> >> Vancouver (engage with existing efforts, see where CIRA can help) is
> following the same path.
> >>
> >
> > What has CIRA done in Calgary?
> >
> CIRA has done a great job in Winnipeg and Montreal. Nothing in Calgary.