AlbertaIX - no longer a Cybera project?

Sat Sep 7 19:28:09 UTC 2013

On 9/5/13 1:47 PM, Theo de Raadt wrote:
> The last six months in AlbertaIX saw no discussions (or approval) for
> any action plan.  Without votes, nothing can be built.

This is probably the key ideological problem and a good example not to 
follow if you are trying to start an exchange.  Do first, implement 
bureaucracy later, if at all.

I completely respect the people that were on the board and also Cybera.  
FWIW, I have no direct insight into the conversations between the people 
involved.  From a distance it seemed like exactly the right people to be 
involved (with only the minor problem of not enough ethernet switch 
pluggin' in and too much meetin' and discussin').

Facility and parties willing, hopefully there will be a YYCIX switch in 
Cybera.

> The entire organization also lacks documents.  The new game plan is to
> follow YYCIX because of Hurricane Electric's arrival at the datacenter
> which was (originally) the least preffered.

Our criteria for choosing a facility in Calgary was:

* Which facilities have a live ethernet switch for any Internet exchange?

Then given the candidate list of data centers in the area:

* Is there a live ethernet switch in their facility?

* How many IPs are pingable on that switch?

* Does the facility want us in their facility?  (Is there any value for 
them?  Are they happy to have us build in?)

* Does the facility want the exchange to succeed?  (Do they get it?)  
(Sadly sometimes the answer here is either indifference or hostility.)

* Does the facility understand that we need them to encourage more 
networks to build into their facility?

* Is the price for cross connects and power reasonable?

* How many networks are in the building?

* Can we get develop enough revenue to cover our costs to get circuits, 
colo, power, cross connects etc to build out to the site?

(DataHive met all of these requirements and was repeatedly very helpful 
to make things happen.)

There's a magic moment in the beginning of forming data center neutral 
exchanges where the engineers operating the exchange and the facility 
owners need to have a meeting of the minds and view the exchange as 
something they are doing together and then take the immediate actions to 
get it live.  I'm not sure how the magic of this goes down since the 
facility owners may or may not view each other as competitors (and may 
or may not view the exchange as that useful).  Once an exchange has 
critical mass like AMS-IX I suppose this becomes an easy decision for a 
new facility owner.

I am led to understand that there is city fiber in Calgary available at 
reasonable cost, which hopefully would translate to exchange switches in 
multiple buildings eventually in Calgary (if various stages of critical 
mass are achieved).

Mike.