2019 Annual General Meeting Overview

On Thursday 13 June the Committee of the New Zealand Internet Exchange Inc (NZIX) held its 2019 Annual General Meeting.

It was great to see so many of our members and industry guests attend the event at the Longroom in Auckland, chaired by committee member Barry Murphy of Devoli Pty Ltd

Society Secretary, Nathan Brookfield of the Internet Association of Australia, commenced the formalities of the AGM with the Secretary’s Report. NXIZ was proud to support the 2019 NZNOG Conference, where our hoodies were a great hit, modelled here by Devoli’s Callum Barr.

The report highlighted membership continuing to steadily grow, with a total of 60 members in March 2019, up from 52 the previous year. Recent updates to by-laws were mentioned. These updates will enable greater clarity regarding financial members in order to stand for committee elections. Changes to the Acceptable Use Policy have also been implemented to reflect NZ law. All documents outlining these changes are now available on the NZIX website.

Treasurer Dave Mill was pleased to announce that as of November 2018 NZIX has repaid its loan to IAA, still making a profit of $64,196 for 2018/19, with $145,862 cash on hand at end year.

Due to the streaming demands being placed on New Zealand through the delivery of the 2019 Rugby World Cup, NZIX have been working to facilitate network upgrades to support our member’s needs. A project that was already in the pipeline, the RWC increased the demand for 40G and 100G in NZ which has driven the need for this project to be pushed forward to facilitate the smooth coverage of the nation’s favourite sport at the event starting in September.

Additional spends for this year include building a 100G ring around our 3 existing pops, funding to cover work by Nathan Ward of SearchLight, Capex expenses and moving into Spark colocation in MDR. If required, a pre-arranged loan from IAA is available.

Tim Rapheal from IX Australia delivered the technical report in which he highlighted that this year there were 69 unique peers, an aggregate peak in excess of 97.9Gbit/s on May 9 2019, an average nightly aggregate of approximately 80Gbit/s, 51,419 IPv4 Routes and 24,759 IPv6 Routes.

Following the official close of the AGM, Nathan Ward of SearchLight delivered a presentation on the new AKL-IX 100G ring. Starting with a retrospective look at the state of how things worked previously, Nathan explained how member demand, in particular the current streaming demand for the RWC in NZ was the driving force behind the earlier than planned upgrade.   

The project includes increasing the core from 40G to 100G, new switches (3 in production and 1 spare), removal of some current switches, completion of the ring, offering of 40G and 100G member ports and a move to a Spark rack in MDR.

The plan for the future is to double up the 100G links, initially between 220Q and MDR, with the possibility to triple the 100G links over time. NZIX plan to retire 1G at MDR/Vocus as peers move to over to 10G, allowing equipment to be used to expand to new sites around the country.

AGM slides are available here. Meeting minutes will be sent to the voting contacts of all NZIX members.

If you would like any additional information, or have any feedback, please do not hesitate to reach out to the team via info@ix.nz.