A post to dump mind views. Hasgeek folks (who run RootConf conference in Bangalore + some other places around) seem to be in expanding mode. Besides RootConf which is a conference primarily for DevOps community, they are doing events on Fintech etc and now expanding to networks. I have been to and presented at multiple RootConfs on RIPE Atlas probes and BGP routing security. Both of these topics were from networking domain but closely touch the Sysadmins and thus probably made sense.

IRINN (Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers) is a NIR (National Internet Registry) for India operating under the APNIC RIR (Regional Internet Registry). IRINN is run and managed by NIXI. It’s a decent NIR and was set up in 2012. Indian organisations have the option to either maintain relation with APNIC or with IRINN.

A large number of small networks prefer IRINN because it’s annual charges are 25000 INR / $351 USD against APNIC’s membership fee which is over 2x of that.

A nice short 20mins video by VOX on how the internet works. It covers the basic idea of connectivity a higher level and I am probably going to pass this link to friends & family members outside of the networking domain when they ask. It also covers 60 Hudson Street which I visited exactly an year ago. :)

Hello world from Gujarat! This is my 3rd visit to Gujarat. :)

Coming to today’s post: I have noticed ISPs doing really crazy things to maximise traffic on peerings and IXPs. Some of those are bad and some are very bad. Additionally I came across this comment and thought to put this quick post.

Example of some bad ways to increase IXP traffic:

• Using upstream’s ASN to keep AS path shorter (yes, believe me I have seen that!)

Since last week of Nov 2019, I am having serious issues with Airtel at my home. Somehow 4G signal SNR is very poor and most of the calls just fail on that. Airtel support just mentioned that they are putting a new site in my area in Jan 2020 but fail to explain why suddenly it went so bad. I can imagine that support team staff does not have visibility to network in real-time and likely it would be an issue with the 4G antenna on one or more towers. 2G signal was good but latency was extremely high to connect call plus calls still failed regardless (maybe due to high strain on 2G).

Last week I visited Delhi and spent some time at the “Regulating for Inclusion” workshop. I usually do not attend non-NOG events but this one seemed interesting and was relatively easy to attend as was in Delhi.

Discussion on backhaul

There is quite a bit of talk as well as focus on the backhaul capacity but somehow discussion missed a very important element of the picture - Internet Exchange Points (IXP). Unless we have a vibrant number of exchanges and a broad sense to build & promote exchanges, we cannot really tap the Gig capacity of modern fibre to the home systems. In the absence of IXPs, we would end up in having a large part of interconnection in Mumbai, Chennai (and possibly Delhi, though Noida seems to be the case instead of Delhi). Imagine the amount of backhaul capacity we would need on the middle mile in these cases. Furthermore, traffic going out of region reduces the resiliency of the overall system in case of high-stress periods of natural disaster etc.

In March 2018 I mapped nodes of Facebook globally using the airport string they use in the CDN URLs (detailed post here). Since then I posted a couple of times updates on as they are adding more nodes. There also have been questions via emails and comments on the blog in recent times about updated data.

Here goes latest data as on 22 Nov 2019. It’s published here.

Global stats

• Total nodes increased from 2204 as from Aug 2018 to 3184 now in Nov 2019.

This is a common discussion topic when I tell friends in Indian network operators that I work from home. As soon as I say that, they ask me - “How good is the connectivity at your home?” And of course like all answers in engineering - it depends. :)

So I have two links at my home: IAXN and Siti broadband. IAXN is a FTTH connection with 50Mbps down and 25Mbps up, while Siti broadband is a DOCSIS connection with ~60Mbps down and 25Mbps up.

(A very Indian specific post, International readers feel free to skip this one!)

From last month Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019 came to existence. It increases fines for various violations a lot more then what it used to be. I don’t need to cover what has changed since it has been extensively covered in various news articles. One can refer to the Times of India article here which has a nice comparison of old Vs new fine.

I am in Chiang Mai, Thailand for APNIC 48 conference. Earlier today attended APIX meeting where many IX members from Asian community gave an update including NIXI i.e National Internet Exchange of India.

As per the update NIXI now allows content players to peer at the exchange. NIXI earlier had a strict requirement of telecom license for anyone to peer but as of now it allows anyone with IP address and AS number to be part of the exchange just like all other exchanges. This is a really good development coming this year after their announcement of the removal of x-y charge. One strange thing remains that their website is still not updated to reflect that which is probably just work in progress. As per representative from NIXI they now openly welcome all content players to peer at NIXI.