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.

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 excited to introduce our new Committee Member, Jocelyn Bateman! Jocelyn will be serving on the Committee for the next four years, and we are very happy that she has come onboard. Joining NZIX in 2020 as part of the AWS Edge PoP build in Auckland, she subsequently decided that she would like to become a Committee Member and work more with NZ carriers/peers and would also like to help attract more content into NZ. 

With a background in network engineering and educational qualifications in Engineering, Business and CCIE, Jocelyn has worked for several Australian carriers. Her career began when she worked in the Telstra International Cable Station/Exchange in Sydney – the only cable on the east coast back then! The team configured Frame Relay between AU-US. The Internet came about within her first year of working, and she tells us that it’s been too interesting not to stay connected (pun intended!).  

Currently working in the Global Interconnection Strategy Team, she is responsible for the strategy for the connectivity between AWS and the rest of the Internet for Oceania. The role is technical, commercial, legal, and project-based and includes a lot of negotiation. She says she is lucky to have an amazing team and that she really enjoys working for AWS. 

All work talk aside, Jocelyn grew up on a dairy farm in NSW before moving to Sydney to study and work. One of her favourite things to do is mowing the lawn, as she likes most outdoor work. She also enjoys spending time with her family and walking her dog.  

Vocus has been in contact and has requested that we move racks! This will take place as soon as the new rack is delivered and our MTP structured cabling + dual-power is ready for use. At this site, we initially deployed hardware in the shared community rack, but as we grew and the site evolved, we moved our 100G hardware to a dedicated half rack which has continued to be our main presence since. However, there are still a few customers in the shared rack hanging off a legacy 48x 10G port device.  

A simple three-step process is underway to migrate everything: 

Step one 
Migrate any core links out of the shared rack to go via our existing MTP structured cabling from the OFDF directly to our current dedicated rack. For us, this work was completed on Monday, 29 August 2022 (https://status.ix.nz/incidents/2hdzwm79xqr1) and went well as expected with no issues.  

Step two 
Complete an audit of each existing customer in the shared rack and determine if we can migrate them to go via the existing structured cabling system. This is currently underway by the DC, and once verified, individual members will be notified of an estimated 10min outage of their 10G port as we migrate it to our dedicated rack into our 100G switch. Once completed, this will allow us to vacate the shared rack and decommission legacy hardware – WOOHOO!  

Step three 
This step is pending rack readiness which is expected to be around mid-October, and involves migrating all customers to the new rack in one fell swoop! All affected members will receive an outage notice two weeks prior to the commencement of work including details of what to expect as works are completed. Spare hardware is ready for this so that it will be a simple config clone, shut down the existing device, re-patch the MPO connector ends of the structured cabling at the OFDF to our new MTP cables toward the new rack, and just like magic, it will all come back up! 

It’s a simple process, but you must expect the unexpected. Rest assured, this is being planned meticulously to account for the unforeseen, and we will have techs onsite to resolve any immediate issues in addition to a large outage window to give the slack needed to do it right the first time!   

Kia Ora

Welcome. We’ve had much change in our governance since we last talked so let’s kick off with that. I’m Dave, your new Chair, not to be confused with Dave, your old Tres. Chris is now Treasurer; I’m Chair. We swapped roles – not rigged at all. I’d like to thank Chris for his years of service as our previous Chair. Tom retains Secretary finishing out an officer election as predictable as UFB throughput – sorry, Aussies!

We also welcome Jocelyn Bateman to our committee. Jocelyn brings a wealth of experience to our virtual boardroom, not least from her current Global Interconnection Strategy role for AWS. We’re extremely fortunate to get the level of expertise that comes with the many internationals on our committee. Apologies, Jocelyn, for already loading you up with many roles! We thank the outgoing committee member, Barry Murphy, for his efforts at NZIX. I’m happy to say Simon was re-elected for another term at our recent AGM.

At the AGM, we presented our financials, tech, and other general admin, and then plied all attending with booze and grub – Marketing came up with the idea.

In useful stuff, we’ve commenced our Auckland ring upgrade, which will also incorporate Datacom Orbit Drive into our blazing new 400G ring. Orbit has been a long-requested data centre missing from our footprint, so we’re excited to finally commence this project. I’m sure Aaron gained worthy life experiences from submitting 47 different technical project plans over the last few months. We’ll keep you updated via our socials on how the project advances – or doesn’t, as often is the case with fibre/DC builds.

On the day of our AGM, we held a day-long committee strategy session with separate general governance and technical sessions. This was great; after years of endless Zooms, it was fantastic to see each other face to face and discuss the challenges and growth of the IXs. What could have taken days of VCs we nutted out in a one-day session. One outcome of that session was that we should stick to our knitting, that is, building and maintaining IXs, and not carry on with our Educational ISP concept (for now, at least).

Well, that should bring you all up to speed. There will be a test at the next AGM – the winner gets a bar tab.

Nga Mihi,

Dave Mill
Chair