How do we contact YXEIX?
Send email to [email protected] for non-urgent issues, [email protected] for urgent problem reports, or [email protected] for peering requests. All inquiries will be held confidential.
What speeds are supported?
The preferred choice of connection will depend upon the location. Typical connections are 1Gb & 10Gb (SFP based). Please contact us for information on other port speeds.
What other services can we pickup at the YXEIX locations?
We would be happy to discuss once we are up and running.
How much do ports cost?
1Gbps and 10Gbps connections are $1200/year with a one-time setup fee of $250 which includes an SFP and patch cable. For connection speeds faster than 10Gbps please email us at [email protected].
How do we donate to YXEIX?
YXEIX was built upon donations. We are very interested in receiving SFP optics, switches, or money to continue our work. We have listed our contributors on a seperate page along with ways of donating.
Does this operate like an ISP?
Internet Exchanges are not ISPs (Internet Service Providers). No traffic, bandwidth or other services are being sold by YXEIX.
The simple, noble goal is to create a meeting place where Western Canadian networks can directly exchange some of their traffic efficiently on an ethernet switch without additional costs.
Many Internet Service Providers provide their services at the locations where YXEIX has switches. YXEIX does not intend to compete with the internet service providers, but instead complement their services to improve local Internet performance.
What limitations are there on traffic?
Similar to AMS-IX and TORIX, the switch ports are configured with a variety of port-security features so that one peer cannot damage another's experience. If port-security is triggered, the port will appear "dead" for a little while.
- Peers may place only a single MAC address on their port. Use of more MAC addresses may trigger port-security features.
- Only ARP, IPv4, and IPv6 traffic are allowed. Other traffic may trigger port-security features.
- Only one layer-3 router allowed per port.
- The peering router must speak BGP.
- Peers may speak BGP directly between each other.
- Additionally, two YXEIX-operated BGP route servers are available to share routes in a easy and simple fashion. As at other IX, these route servers operate using a feature called AS transparency -- they do not prepend their own AS to the AS_PATH on the reflected routes, thus creating shorter (better) paths (IETF description). The session to the route servers should be configured to accept this situation, typically with a vendor-specific option such as "no bgp enforce-first-as" (Cisco IOS, Cisco IOS-XE), "bgp enforce-first-as disable" (Cisco IOS-XR), "no bgp-enforce-first-as" (Quagga and family), "enforce neighbor-as no" (OpenBGPD), etc.
These requirements are not unique to YXEIX. The introductions and sample configurations at AMS-IX or SWISSIX, or other internet exchanges can be valuable. Our operators will help peers, and hope to provide samples of our own in the future.
Are there any rules?
The internet exchange switch is a fabric shared by all peers. Peers must avoid doing anything which might overload the fabric, mis-direct traffic, or otherwise cause harm to any other peers. If a peer shows a willful disregard for others, they will be disconnected by the operators. The full set of Exchange Participation Rules are published.
What is the process for getting connected?
Send us an email telling us about your network and requesting a port. All inquiries will be held confidential.
What BGP communities are available for traffic engineering?
Our route servers perform actions based upon many industry standard BGP communities. A detailed document explains these.
Please see our Locations list for datacenter contact information to make arrangements for a cross-connect.
What other services can we expect?
Microsoft Connected Cache
The internet exchange provides access to a Microsoft Connected Cache (MCC) from our services network. The MCC contains updates to Windows, Office, and XBox. The MCC is an easy way to offload large updates traffic from transit links.
- Request peering with AS 11655 by emailing [email protected]. We will use peeringdb information unless directed otherwise.
- Our services network has valid RPKI.
- Our recommended prefix limits are 1 for IPV4 and 10 for IPV6
- Prefixes that you want serviced by our MCC must include the large community 11655:8075:100
- Once peering is established you can verify that the large community is present by checking at lg.yxeix.ca
- For the looking glass, enter your network into "show route IP_ADDRESS". You should see your network including the large community
- It takes a while for Microsoft to pick up the change. Expect many hours before traffic is directed to the MCC
- MCC support requests can be sent to [email protected]
