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!)
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.
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.
It’s kind of fun times in India with many IX’es showing up and now NIXI finally removing their traffic wise charge.
I came across this email which they sent to their member networks recently:
From: I X <[ix@nixi.in](mailto:ix@nixi.in)\>
Sent: Thu, 21 Feb 2019 12:48:31 GMT+0530
To: "members " <[members@nixi.in](mailto:members@nixi.in)\>
Cc: "[ceo@nixi.in](mailto:ceo@nixi.in)" <[ceo@nixi.in](mailto:ceo@nixi.in)\>
Subject: Change in Data Transfer Charges (X-Y)
Dear Members,
In reference to the Board's direction to reduce the current data transfer (X-Y) charges from Re. 1/GB to Rs. 0/GB. The said reduction in X-Y charges to Rs. 0/GB is being implemented with effect from 1st March 2019.
This is for your kind information please.
Thanks & Regards.
National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI)
[www.nixi.in](http://www.nixi.in/)
Seems like NPIX traffic has started hitting 1Gbps levels and that is just so amazing. Came across this post by Niranjan.
NPIX or Nepal Internet Exchange is located in Kathmandu and operates out of its own datacenter. There’s a huge amount of (overhead) dark fibre availability in Kathmandu and as of the writing of this post I see 30 members at NPIX. 1Gbps might seem low from Western IX’es standards but that’s a quite good amount of traffic for an IX in South Asian region. If you see the member list there are just smaller ISPs and not many content players over there. Comparing numbers by NIXI traffic,
Today I was having a chat with my friend Hari Haran. He mentioned that Facebook has started its PoP in Mumbai. This seems true and Facebook has mentioned GPX Mumbai as their private peering PoP in their peeringdb record.
I triggered a quick test trace to “www.facebook.com” on IPv4 from all Indian RIPE Atlas probes and resolved “www.facebook.com” on the probe itself. The lowest latency is from Airtel Karnataka and that’s still hitting Facebook in Singapore. I do not see any of networks with probe coverage hitting Facebook node locally.
One of frequent email and contact form message I get my blog is about available content networks in India and where one can peer. There are certain content networks in India and of course most of the content networks have open peering policy and are usually happy with direct inter-connection (we call as “peering”) with the ISP networks (often referred to as “eyeball networks”). Some of these networks have a backbone which connects back to their key datacenter locations on their own circuits via Singapore/Europe, some other have simply placed their caching server where cache fill happens over IP transit. Based on publically known information across community and of course peeringdb, following content players are available in India and known to be open for peering:
So it seems like apart from voice interconnect issues, Jio is also facing routing issues on the backbone. I ran a trace to one of IP’s on Jio network allocated to end customer - 169.149.212.122. I ran trace from all Indian RIPE Atlas probes measurement here. There seem quite a few RIPE Atlas probes which are giving latency on 150ms + range. Seems like they are downstream or downstream of downstream of Tata Comm’s AS4755 and routing is happening via Singapore!
I just presented data on Performance of Root DNS anycast in UK & Ireland at INEX meeting.
An interesting promo video on Internet peering and why it is important in context of Africa by Internet Society.
And college started after pretty good holi holidays. Again having bit painful time due to hot weather and this is just start of summers. Well all I can hope is that there won’t be voltage issues in village again (like last time). And just to make sure on that part - I have put 2 RTI’s asking Power department about their preparation details. :)
Anyways coming on blog post topic for the day - the effect of “next-hop-self” at an IXP when there are peers as well as transit customers of a network. Just to be clear in start - this post will stick to technical side of it and without going into IXP policy side of it.