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Chair update – Q2 2026

Kia ora koutou,

It’s been a busy and rewarding few months for NZIX and we want to take a moment to share some highlights with our peering community.

Marking ten years of the New Zealand Internet Exchange is the kind of milestone that invites reflection. What started as a modest peering point has grown into a cornerstone of New Zealand’s internet infrastructure.

In this newsletter update you’ll find the highlights of our Anniversary event along with a report from NZNOG in Christchurch with details of what’s in store for the exchange in the coming year. You’ll also find news about the IAA Systers NZ workshop, and some important information about our upcoming AGM, including more details on the three Committee positions that are up for election this time. If you’ve ever thought of getting more involved in how NZIX is run, now’s a good opportunity to put your hand up.

NZIX has always been a member-driven organisation, and that’s only true because our members show up and show their support: at conferences, at events, and when it counts at governance level.

As always, if you have questions, feedback, or topics you’d like to see covered in future updates, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Ngā mihi,
Callum Chair,
NZIX

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A DECADE TO REMEMBER

NZIX celebrated ten years of peering in Casino Royale Style!

Ten years ago, NZIX was formed and undertook a mission to improve the internet in New Zealand by creating and successfully running the first member-based internet exchange. On the last Thursday of February 2026, on the 38th floor of the voco hotel, at Bar Albert, that vision and our successful decade of peering was celebrated in spectacular fashion, with champagne, casino chips, and a sea of black-tie elegance worthy of Bond himself.

Guests arrived at Bar Albert to breathtaking panoramic views stretching across the Auckland skyline – a fitting backdrop for a milestone of this magnitude. The Casino Royale theme transformed the venue into an atmosphere of refined glamour, with members stepping into a world of high-stakes fun and warm camaraderie. Dressed to impress in their finest black-tie attire, the NZIX community showed up in true style.

The full Committee were dressed to kill and on hand to welcome guests. Committee Chair, Callum Barr joined Dave Mill and Shaun Fisher in opening proceedings with a journey down memory lane, recounting how we got here, the big milestones we achieved and thanking all the people who played a part along the way.

Amid the clinking of glasses and the buzz of lively conversation, members enjoyed fine food and flowing drinks while trying their luck at casino-style tables. Whether bluffing at the card tables or cheering on friendly rivals, the competitive spirit was very much alive, but all in good fun, with prizes adding an extra dash of excitement to the night.

This anniversary is more than a number. It’s a testament to the dedication of every member, partner, volunteer and supporter who has helped shape NZIX into what it is today. From humble beginnings to a thriving community at the heart of New Zealand’s digital infrastructure, a decade of connection and collaboration is something truly worth raising a glass to.

Here’s to the next ten years and whatever extraordinary evenings they may hold. Thank you to all our members for making NZIX the community it is. The mission, as always, is very much accepted.

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1010 AGM save the date

Mark your calendars. The NZIX AGM is coming up on Thursday, 23 July 2026. We’ll be back at The Long Room in Auckland, with online attendance available for those joining from further afield. Full event details to follow.

This year is also an election year with three positions open for nomination. We’ll be in touch soon with everything you need to know to participate in this year’s proceedings.

Watch this space.

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Portal Automation: What took so long?

We know. We know.

You’ve been waiting. You’ve been patient. You’ve been this guy, asleep on the data centre floor, waiting for a NOC to change a MAC access-list.

But it’s here! NZIX Member Portal Automation is live and it was worth the wait.

So what actually took so long?

Honestly? We built it properly.

Under the hood, the team has spent the past six to eight months rebuilding the foundations: a new automation engine, API integrations with Netbox, PeeringDB and IRRDB, a completely restructured change request data model, route server pushes via Ansible, and a security and permissions framework that means you’re only ever touching your own stuff. The result is an automation platform we can build on: not a quick fix that creates more problems than it solves.

What can you do with it?

  • MAC Address Changes: update your MAC address directly from the portal. No NOC. No ticket. No waiting. Just done. (Yes, really.)
  • Other Peering Services: IP allocation, BGP session configuration and VLAN,  all automated
  • Port Orders: automatic LOA generation and instant port deployment
  • Port Upgrades: convert to LACP or add additional ports (downgrades excluded for now -but honestly, who’s downgrading? 😏)
  • Peering Services: IP allocation, BGP session configuration, VLAN and MAC address deployment and changes, all automated
  • Service Migrations: move all services from one port to another (currently only peering, but other product types not implemented are supported too)
  • Cancellations: automated, with our existing billing period structure (some manual crediting still applies, we’re not completely hands-off yet)

 

All of it self-service. Most completed in minutes. 24/7.

What’s coming? (Maybe. Soon. We’re not promising anything.)

We’re not done. Here’s what’s in the pipeline, subject to the usual caveats about software development timelines and the laws of physics:

  • Health Status: live link state, errors, congestion, light levels, route server status, missing bilaterals. Know what’s happening with your services without having to ask us.
  • Notifications : health alerts, mailing lists per exchange, enhanced maintenance and outage notifications
  • Flow Metrics: because numbers are good
  • New Products: 400G member ports (vendor interop testing underway), VLL (virtual leased line / point-to-point circuits), and Secondary Peering for an easy on-ramp to the IX

 

Watch this space.

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NZNOG returns to Christchurch

NZIX was once again a proud Gold Sponsor of the annual NZNOG conference, and this year the NOG community descended on the Garden City of Ōtautahi Christchurch for what turned out to be the biggest conference yet.

NZIX was also delighted to once again support the IAASysters NZ program as a Bronze Sponsor as it returned for its second year. The initiative, backed by the Internet Association of Australia (IAA) and NZNOG, supports women in the internet industry through a one-day workshop focused on expert career advice and the soft skills essential for career advancement. The IAASysters NZ Workshop preceded the main NZNOG conference, with participants then joining the broader event. It was a fantastic way to hit the ground running.

The official welcome drinks were held at Micky Finn’s, where the conversations flowed as freely as the drinks. It was a warm and lively start to the conference, with familiar faces and new ones settling into the NZNOG spirit.

Thursday morning kicked off the conference proper and the NZIX team had our signature purple stand primed and ready. This year we went all out on the giveaways! We handed out over 150 hoodies . . . have you cracked the code on the back? We also had Bellroy laptop cases, playing cards, console cables, socks, commemorative coins, and pins. Safe to say, the hoodies were the talk of the conference floor! It was wonderful to connect with our members, suppliers, and the broader attendee community throughout both days.

Day one featured a strong lineup of presentations, with our very own Aaron Chidiac delivering the only IX update of the conference. With a record 260 attendees this was the largest NZNOG to date and the energy in the room was something else entirely.

The conference dinner saw us bused out to the stunning Air Force Museum of New Zealand. It provided a truly unique backdrop for the delicious 3 course meal, with aircraft overhead and great company all around.

Day two was another full day of thought-provoking presentations and concluded following a series of lightning talks, leaving attendees with a choice of post-NOG adventures. Some took to the skies (virtually) at the Jetex Flight Simulator, while others opted for a scenic evening aboard the Christchurch Tramway Restaurant – a charming way to see the city and wind down after two full days.

NZNOG 2026 was an outstanding success by every measure: record attendance, a fantastic venue, and the kind of community spirit that makes this event one of the highlights of the year. If the NOG will have us, we’ll see you all back in 2027!

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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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