nixi

NIXI expansion & some thoughts

Anurag Bhatia
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.

Why Indian internet traffic routes from outside of India?

Anurag Bhatia
After my last post about home networking, I am jumping back into global routing. More specifically how Indian traffic is hitting the globe when it does not need to. This is an old discussion across senior management folks in telcos, policymakers, and more. It’s about “Does Indian internet traffic routes from outside of India?” and if the answer is yes then “Why?” and “How much?” It became a hot topic, especially after the Snowden leaks.

Missing IRINN route objects & outage!

Anurag Bhatia
A friend of mine buzzed me yesterday about his missing route objects. Later multiple other ISPs told the same story which triggered me to put this as a question on INNOG Mailing list. Many folks replied of missing route objects there and it seems to be limited to IRINN members only. I also asked the same question on APNIC mailing list and it was again confirmed about the issue. Before I proceed further, here’s what it is all about.

Alternate to IRINN IRR manual entry / ALTDB

Anurag Bhatia
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.