IXP

IX management via Gitlab CI!

I was having this discussion with someone recently on possible software to manage an IXP. Lately, IXP Manager has become the de-facto choice for managing IX. It’s a good tool. Nick and INEX team has built a fantastic open-source tool. But I still feel it’s a bit overloaded for a small 1-2 DC IX operation.

If I have to set up a small to mid-size IX, I would rather do that with arouteserver instead of IXP Manager as I did in case of BharatIX in Mumbai (until it shutdown!). One of the problems with arouteserver is that it can be script intensive and one may need something around it to manage it for things like build config on clients.yml update, regularly update filters etc.

NIXI expansion & some thoughts

Background

Lately, NIXI has been making a bit of news in the Indian peering ecosystem. NIXI for those who may not be aware is the National Internet Exchange of India. It was founded in 2003 with the idea to provide inter-connection layer 2 peering fabric for local Indian ISPs. They were supposed to ensure domestic Indian traffic is exchanged within India and not outside of India. In my previous post, I did cover how that is not true for now. They never picked up much interconnection due to a number of fundamental issues with their policies.