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It was well over a year ago when we let all our members know about our plans to expand and upgrade the AKL-IX. And if we’re being honest, the planning and quoting and planning and quoting started awhile before that.

We are so happy to confirm that all the planned work has been completed and you can now find the IX has:

• A new POP at Datacom Orbit Drive
• A diverse west path (avoiding the bridge)
• 400G redundant and diverse ring!

And looks like this . . .

This project took many man hours from both the NZIX Committee and the IAA technical team and after some unexpected delays, we are delighted to close off this project and move onto the next one.

Thank you to everyone involved in making this happen and we hope our members enjoy their new AKL-IX redundant and diverse ring!

We’re delighted to announce our newest Member to the NZIX — Telstra Global (AS4637) — taking up their first 10G port in AKL-IX! This is great news for our smaller networks and kudos to Telstra for taking the initiative on joining our peering fabric and establishing a session with the route servers!

As it stands, Telstra have only dipped their toes this side of the pond by announcing their international only prefixes as domestic Australian prefixes (AS1221) are yet to be seen, but we’re optimistic they will in time and this should permit a better alternative for networks connecting to Telstra AU domestic rather than routing via Singapore, here’s hoping that this is a taste of bigger things to come!

Check out those big smiles! Maybe it’s because they were in SUVA. Last year in October, Chris and Dave attended a UN meeting at the United Nations’ office as part of a task force that is heading up a new IXP in the Pacific.

The Pacific IXP project is a new initiative that will form a multi-country IXP in the South Pacific region – built to Fiji, Samoa and New Zealand. In future, nine other countries can connect and will have better access to content within the region.

So far a task force has been formed, comprising UN ESCAP, Paul Brooks, Elly from APNIC, NZIX (Chris and Dave), representatives from the Samoan Government and SAM-IX and representatives from the Fijian Government and Telecommunications authority. They are hoping to create an organisation that owns the hardware and operates independently, but is run by a committee. Initial surveys with the countries that we’re targeting are on-going. So far, the responses are positive and it shows that there is interest from local ISPs in those countries to connect to the Pacific IXP.

NZIX is assisting in this project in a number of ways. Our Committee can offer valuable expertise in running IXPs and assistance in managing existing relationships with many content and cloud providers. There is also potential to provide pseudo-wires or similar to build the network.

For more information, you can watch an update that Chris provided at NZNOG here, and also Dave’s lightning talk from APRICOT, which you can watch here.

Stay connected with us on social media and keep an eye out for our future newsletters for updates on this great project.

Late last year we gave members the opportunity to pre-order ports at our new PoP in Auckland – Datacom Orbit Drive, followed by a happy announcement that services were up and running in late January. Datacom joins the network as part of a planned series of upgrades to our Auckland ring (project AKL_EX22) as traffic continues to grow and the demand for capacity grows along with it! Contractors delivered 1 x 96F MTP structured cabling to both telco rooms 1 and 2 with new dark fibre paths entering the data centre form separate entries and telco rooms, increasing diversity. With a current average daily peak of 370Gbps, AKL-IX is our largest IX and is set to get even bigger.

The new MDR <> Datacentre220 path was installed December 2022 and has been pushing traffic since. Our path between these sites is a diverse 2x100G path for a total of 400G of point-to-point capacity!

The goal of the AKL_EX22 project is to deliver a 400G redundant and diverse ring network with a path forward to the 400G Switch + 800G/1.2T ring into the future. Our DWDM 400G Muxponder has arrived, but unfortunately we’ve been hit with massive delays on the east and west dark fibre paths, that are being supplied by Vodafone. We had hoped they would arrive in December!

The East path has been partially delivered to us at the end of March 2023 and work is underway to get cross connects done, testing the line with ODTR then installing our DWDM hardware to bring the link up. The west path delivery is expected to take longer with works required in the middle of the highway and on top of this we are being asked by our DC provider, Spark, to relocate racks at MDR! An IAA engineer may be shipped over to NZ to get these big changes done.

Another fantastic NZNOG took place in Rotorua late last month! As proud Gold Sponsors, we had a stand again this year, and used the opportunity to catch up with as many members as possible. We also ran bingo, which was a bit of fun, and we’d like to thank NZNOG for their support of the game, and thank our wonderful Committee members, Dave Mill and Matthew Enger for organising it.

In the conference itself NZIX Committee member, Simon Allard in his capacity as Head of Technology Architecture at 2degrees, gave a fascinating talk about the impacts and learnings from Cyclone Gabyfor both the Vocus and 2degrees networks. Rene, from FlexOptix, gave both a terrifying but heart-warming talk on the Keep Ukraine Connected project, and our own Matt K gave a bit of an update on ‘all things tech’ on NZIX’s 3 exchanges.

There were many “angry Australian” visitors from across the ditch. One of whom gave a fantastic network update and informative lighting talk – thank you, Matt K! If you missed Matt’s presentations, you can catch up on YouTube. You may also have met Jemma at our booth, who joins us as a welcome addition to the NZIX team, taking care of our accounts, working closely with Tanzia, our Executive Officer.

We had some great merch items up for grabs this year from carabiners (they also serve as a bottle opener – you’re welcome!) to Pacman themed mouse mats, beer glasses and sour grape lollies. We hope you all managed to find something to tempt you.

As part of our network expansion plans in Auckland, our new Point of Presence (PoP), Datacom Orbit Drive, is now at the stage of taking pre-orders and is expected to go-live late in January 2023.

Members can now pre-order 10G/40G/100G ports at this new location via the Member Portal. Once the site is fully operational, we will email members who have placed pre-orders to let them know we are up and running.

If you have any queries regarding the new PoP, please get in touch with us at peering@ix.nz

In preparation for the end of the year, we would like to inform members of our embargo period: Friday, 23 December 2022 – Sunday, 8 January 2023 (inclusive). During this period, we will not be provisioning any new services or changing existing services. Rest assured, support staff will be on call if any urgent issues or network emergencies arise. If you have any orders or change requests, please submit them by Friday, 9 December 2022. 

We’re thrilled that Simon will be continuing his service to NZIX by serving on the Committee for another four-year term. Simon joined NZIX in 2018 as he works for a large telco that heavily relies on peering. He says, “peering in New Zealand is a big part of the New Zealand Internet, and it’s important that it’s well managed with strong governance.”  

Currently working as the Head of Technology Architecture for 2Degrees, Simon began working in the Internet industry when he was 17. For Simon, it was new and exciting, and he knew that it was going to become a big part of our lives. His first job was on an Internet helpdesk at iHug when the Internet cost was $10 per Mbyte – YIKES! He quickly moved into Programming and Networking, where he remained for ten years. Since then, he’s worked at Maxnet/Vodafone and then settled in at Orcon. Orcon became Callplus, which then became Vocus, and Vocus is now becoming 2Degrees.  

All work aside, Simon is happily married to his wife, Kylie, and has three young children (Lockie 9, Isabel 6 and Nico 2). In his spare time, Simon volunteers for the New Zealand Coastguard and has been part of it for 10+ years. He is now a skipper of a Quick Rescue Vessel (QRV) and says, “bringing people home to their loved ones in some challenging situations is very fulfilling!”.