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December 3, 2025
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Chair update – Q4 2025

What a busy six months it has been for NZIX! We’ve seen significant changes, exciting developments, and continued growth as we strengthen New Zealand’s internet infrastructure.

First, I’d like to extend our sincere thanks to Dave and Chris, who have stepped down from their roles as Chair and Treasurer respectively. Their dedication and leadership have been invaluable to NZIX, and we’re grateful for the strong foundation they’ve helped build.

I’m honoured to have taken on the role of Chair, and I’m pleased to introduce our refreshed committee structure. Nathan has stepped up as our new Treasurer, and Shaun joins us as Secretary. Together, we’re committed to continuing NZIX’s mission and building on the excellent work of our predecessors.

Last month, we held our board strategy day in Australia, which was a great success. It was an excellent opportunity to align on our vision and priorities for the coming years, and we’re excited about the initiatives we’ll be rolling out.

I recently attended Peering Asia in Manila, where we had productive discussions with content providers and network operators from across the region. You’ll find a detailed update on the outcomes of this conference later in this newsletter.

Looking ahead, don’t forget to mark your calendars for our 10-year anniversary celebration coming up next year. This will be a milestone event celebrating a decade of NZIX, and it’s not to be missed!

As we head into the holiday season, I’d like to wish everyone a merry and safe break. Thank you for your continued support of NZIX.

Warm regards,
Callum

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NZIX AGM 2025 recap

This year was the kind of year our team affectionately calls an “uneventful AGM.” No elections, no constitutional changes, no fiery debates. Just a smooth run-through of the year that’s been, healthy financials, thoughtful discussion, and time to connect with members both in-person at the Longroom in Ponsonby and via Zoom.

Highlights from the evening

NZIX Chair Dave Mill opened the meeting at 6pm, confirmed proxies and quorum, and moved swiftly through the required minutes before delivering a concise Chair’s Report.

Dave celebrated our continued support of NZNOG and the launch of a new sponsorship with NZSysters, helping address gender imbalance in the Internet community. He also confirmed a clean annual audit and shared that planning is already underway for our 10-year anniversary celebrations in February 2026.

Financials Looking Strong

Treasurer Chris Browning presented positive results for FY24/25, with a net profit of $330k and strong reserves across cash and investments, building a healthy foundation for future improvements.

Chris also led a lively discussion on the Government’s proposal to introduce income tax for not-for-profit societies. Members shared perspectives on potential implications and mitigation strategies, and the key message was clear: NZIX is monitoring developments closely and committed to minimising any impact should legislation proceed.

Membership & Operations

Secretary Jocelyn Bateman shared updates on our growing membership, outcomes of the recent Committee Strategy Day, and progress on the MSA review currently underway with our legal team. Most importantly, she confirmed that NZIX successfully re-registered under the Incorporated Societies Act 2022 on 27 August 2025.

Technical Outlook

Finally, our lovely technical engineer, Matthew Kobayashi provided a thorough update on all things tech to finish off the formal proceeding of the evening. Running through the metrics of our three IX’s – traffic, port numbers, trends, current hardware, our future plans, and the recent upgrades to our Member Portal. 

Closing the Night

With no further questions from the room or via Zoom, the AGM was formally closed and networking began over drinks, conversation, and canapés – once they finally made it through the crowd of another function happening at the venue. (Worth the wait, we promise.)

Another calm and constructive AGM wrapped! Thank you to everyone who joined us in person and online.

We look forward to seeing you in February 2026 as we celebrate our 10-year milestone.

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NZIX Strategy Day 2025

This year’s Strategy Day was our first full Committee meeting following the recent reshuffle, and the first time our newly appointed Chair, Callum, has led the team in person. Held in Sydney, it brought our incredible group of volunteer Committee members together from across the region for a full day of planning.

We’ve been running an annual Strategy Day for several years now, and it has become a cornerstone event in our calendar. The value of having everyone in one room, talking openly, debating ideas, making decisions efficiently and building genuine connection, simply can’t be replicated online.

As always, the day was structured around three themes: strategy, governance, and technical planning.

Internet Association of Australia CEO, Narelle Clark, joined us for a forward-looking strategy discussion around growth, expansion opportunities and evolving member needs. It was an energising and productive conversation, with some exciting developments now in the pipeline.

Watch this space for announcements… we think you’ll like what’s coming.

Unsurprisingly, a key focus was the Government’s proposed tax legislation affecting not-for-profit societies, and what it could mean for our members. The discussion reinforced our commitment to ensuring NZIX continues to operate for the good of the Internet in New Zealand, and to proactively manage any risks if the proposal progresses.

Callum also shared a detailed update from Peering Asia, where he connected with peers, members, and potential members. The value of being represented at international events was clear, and NZIX will continue to send delegates going forward.

In the afternoon, we welcomed IAA’s Lead Peering Engineer, Aaron Chidiac, to provide a comprehensive update on infrastructure, project status and future technical priorities. A lively planning session followed, covering new architecture options, vendor considerations, location possibilities and product opportunities, proving once again that nothing beats being in the room together when decisions need to be made.

A huge thank you to our Committee members who volunteer many hours to govern and support this society, including travelling across the Tasman to attend this meeting. We are genuinely grateful for your time, passion and commitment.

As always, we welcome ideas from our community.

If you have suggestions for locations, services, products, events, sponsorships or if you simply want to say hello😉, reach out any time via our website or email admin@ix.nz.

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WLG-IX and CHC-IX migration to EVPN VXLAN

We’ve recently upgraded the switching fabric in both Wellington and Christchurch to EVPN VXLAN, which is the modern standard for building resilient, scalable Ethernet fabrics.

Previously, these exchanges ran over VPLS back by an MPLS + LDP core. It did the job, but it came with a few drawbacks. Our switches would exchange labels to establish paths between devices, and in a full mesh configuration the exchange VLAN was stretched across all switches to emulate one big ethernet segment. Because this effectively behaves like a single big switch, everything gets shoved in the data plane, so when a MAC is unknown it became flooded across all pseudowires.

At this point whilst we may know your MAC address, VPLS doesn’t have the ability to associate MAC<>IP mappings, thus broadcasts are inevitable. Another shortcoming of the VPLS implementation our hardware uses is its inability to distribute traffic evenly across the core, this means we had to use traffic engineering (RSVP-TE) to define paths between Site-A<>Site-B, this works well but as the exchange grows so does the amount of pseudowire tunnels, traffic engineering complexity and time to identify/locate faults in a failure scenario.

We also know that VPLS is aging; vendors are no longer prioritising implementation of this feature as the more modern equivalent has been here for a while and is the defacto in 2025 – VXLAN.

An EVPN VXLAN based exchange design resolves a number of our issues by utilising EVPN for the control plane (type 2 EVPN) so MAC and IP bindings are signalled in BGP rather than inferred by flooding. The pseudowires are replaced with simple layer 3 paths which the exchanges associated VXLAN tunnels over, allowing the fabric to use native ECMP for load distribution without traffic engineering with the added benefit of more uniform LAG hashing due to more entropy!

Convergence speeds up as state changes are signalled through EVPN routes instead of data-plane learning and with the added feature of ARP/ND suppression our edge devices will stop IP<>MAC bindings and reply locally to your ARP requests! Although we had to disable that feature due to unexpected behaviour and our commitment to stability, migrating to EVPN VXLAN still yields massive operational and scaling benefits.

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CHC-IX Christchurch 100G ports now available

Following on from the EVPN VXLAN upgrades, NZIX has also completed a major uplift to our Christchurch internet exchange, CHC-IX. The site has seen tremendous growth since launch, with traffic increasing more than ten-fold in just the past three years. With that level of expansion, it was clear that members needed the option to connect at 100G.

In a single overnight maintenance window, the entire CHC-IX switching fabric was replaced at both facilities, and all member ports were migrated. The result is a modern, higher-capacity platform ready to support current and future demand.

If your network has a presence in Christchurch and you’re looking to exchange traffic locally with other CHC-IX member networks, now is the perfect time to order your port – including at 100G.

Order your 100G port for NZD $1250/month from the NZIX Portal now. 

Order ports

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NZIX celebrates 10 years: join us for Casino Royale!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: join us to celebrate a decade of connection, collaboration, and growth.

NZIX is celebrating its 10-year anniversary and our members are invited to a night to remember. Step into the world of Casino Royale, where the stakes are high, the company is exceptional, and luck favours the connected.

Location: Bar Albert, 38th Floor, voco Auckland City Centre, 13 Wyndham Street, Auckland
Date: Thursday 26 February 2026
Time: 1800 hours
Dress: Black Tie

Prepare for an evening of Bond-inspired elegance and high-stakes fun. Savour fine food, enjoy flowing drinks, and try your hand at casino-style games as you compete for prizes – all with spectacular views over the city. Spaces are limited, so be sure to register soon via the NZIX Member Portal:

Accept mission

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Share Your NZIX Memories

As we celebrate a decade of NZIX, we’re collecting memories, photos, stories, milestones, and artefacts that capture the journey of our community and the evolution of the Internet in Aotearoa. Whether you’ve been part of NZIX since the very beginning or joined more recently, your experiences are an important part of our shared history.

We’re inviting Members, industry partners, and friends of the exchange to contribute anything that helps tell the story:

  • Photos of events, equipment or sites and memorable moments
  • Early meeting notes 
  • Media clippings
  • Photos of you wearing vintage merch – if you still have it!
  • Anything that helps tell the story of our IX

Help us unlock the Memory Vault by sending in your materials or putting us in touch with someone who may have something to share. Together, we can build a record that honours the people and effort behind NZIX’s success.

Please email your artifacts to events@ix.nz. 

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NZIX 2025 Embargo

Set your alarms! Embargo time is coming, once again. To ensure your new service requests or cancellations are processed before the end of the year, please submit them by COB Friday, 12 December 2025. 

Any requests received after this date will be actioned after our end-of-year embargo, which runs from COB Friday, 19 December 2025, to Sunday, 4 January 2026. During this period, our team will only be available to assist with urgent support issues.

If you would like any further information or have any queries regarding the network embargo period, please get in touch at admin@ix.nz

We wish you a well-deserved break!

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NZIX attends Peering Asia 7.0 in Manila

We’re pleased to report that NZIX recently attended Peering Asia 7.0, held in Manila, Philippines from November 4-6, 2025. This annual conference continues to be one of the most valuable networking events in the Asia-Pacific region for internet exchange operators and the wider peering community.

Why Peering Asia Matters for NZIX

Peering Asia brings together network operators, content delivery networks, cloud providers, and internet exchange operators from across the region and beyond. For NZIX, attending this conference is essential for several key reasons:

1. Building and Maintaining Relationships: The conference provides an invaluable opportunity to meet face-to face with both existing NZIX members who operate in the region and potential new participants. In our industry, personal relationships matter, and these in-person meetings strengthen the partnerships that make internet peering work effectively.

2. Understanding Global Trends: Major content networks and CDN providers use events like Peering Asia to discuss their infrastructure strategies and expansion plans. Being part of these conversations ensures NZIX stays informed about industry developments that may impact our members and the New Zealand internet ecosystem.

3. Showcasing New Zealand: Attending international conferences allows us to promote the value of peering in New Zealand and highlight the benefits of the NZIX platform. We’re able to demonstrate how our exchanges support both local and international networks in delivering content efficiently to New Zealand users.

4. Peer Learning: Conferences like Peering Asia also provide opportunities to connect with other internet exchange operators, share operational experiences, and learn from the successes (and challenges) of IXs around the world.

The Value of Face-to-Face Engagement

While much of our day-to-day work happens via email and virtual meetings, there’s no substitute for the focused discussions that happen at conferences like Peering Asia. Over the three days, we held numerous productive meetings with major content providers, CDN operators, cloud platforms, and other network infrastructure companies. These conversations help us understand the evolving needs of networks operating in the Asia-Pacific region and ensure NZIX continues to provide a platform that meets international standards while serving the unique requirements of the New Zealand market.

Looking Forward

The relationships built and strengthened at Peering Asia 7.0 will benefit the NZIX community in the months and years ahead. As the internet continues to evolve and content delivery becomes ever more sophisticated, maintaining strong connections with the global peering community ensures New Zealand remains well connected and that our members have access to the networks that matter most to their customers.

We’re grateful for the opportunity to represent NZIX on the international stage and look forward to continuing these important conversations with both current and potential NZIX participants.

If you’d like to learn more about NZIX’s participation in industry events or have questions about peering opportunities, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

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