YYCIX: Calgary Internet Exchange

Progress Report (recent items first)

2019

On Apr 7, xTOM (AS6233) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Mar 18, TELUS Communications (AS852) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Mar 18, replacement of the NTP server was completed. There are now two stratum-2 servers accessed as ntp1.yycix.ca and ntp2.yycix.ca, behind them is a Symmetricom with GPS and crystal.
On March 8, a route-server (rs1, 206.126.225.254, 2001:504:2f::5:3339:254) was moved from DH to AR. At least one route-server should be located at a multi-path location of the fabric, rather than a spur. No traffic was lost, but it took 3 hours to diagnose graphing disruption due to a damaged cable...
On Mar 5, a peer discovered the ntp server was broken (rebooting constantly). A new ntp server will be built in the coming month.
On Mar 4, a 100G link was installed between Rogers and Arrow. The network map has been updated.
On Feb 28, a 20G link was installed between Shaw and Arrow. The network map has been updated.
On Feb 12, Xplornet Communications Inc (AS22995) migrated their connection from Datahive to Rogers.
On Feb 5, the fabric was converted from spanning-tree to VXLAN. With future addition of more fiber paths, the star-topology centered on City Hall can be expanded into a more redundant mesh, so that extra-ordinary events or switch-maintainance affects fewer peers. Some datacenters only have one link ("spurs"), and we have asked them to accept connection of a 2nd circuit (already built!)
On Jan 30, Pason Systems (AS19566) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Jan 18, The Internet Company L.P. (AS29916) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Jan 18, Swift Internet (AS396472) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Jan 15, Columbia Wireless (AS55003) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Jan 15, RBBS Telecom (AS53349) increased their circuit from 1G to 10G, and migrated from Datahive to Arrow.

2018
On Dec 21, the link between City Hall and Rogers was upgraded from 40G to 100G.
On Dec 13, an additional YYCIX switch was brought up at Rogers DC2 datacenter, connected to City Hall switch at 40G.
On Dec 10, the minutes of the Nov 27 10, 2019 board meeting were released.
The 2018 AGM is scheduled for 5:30pm, Nov 27 at

Room #208 on the Second Floor
The Kahanoff Centre
105 12th Avenue SE
Suite 200
Calgary, AB T2G 1A1.

Attend to hear updates about recent changes, vote in the next board, then attend a social peering discussion over drinks. Voting members are asked to mail the board to declare their participation, or to request multimedia access. Please send nominations & seconds to the board. If you cannot attend but wish to vote, inform the board who is your proxy. The room holds 50 -- subject to those limits, observers are welcome.
On Nov 26, Imperium (AS55016) reconnected to YYCIX after a 4 year hiatus.
On Nov 15, the link between City Hall and Arrow was upgraded from 40G to 100G.
On Oct 21, Arrow Calgary (AS20119) increased their circuit from 10G to 20G.
On Oct 12, CANARIE (AS6509) added a 2x10G selective peering.
On Oct 10, the link between City Hall and Arrow was upgraded from 2x10G to 40G. Building a fabric for the future!
On Oct 9, Actrack Solutions (AS54987) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Oct 7, the YYCIX route servers started filtering prefixes which are RPKI ROA invalid. We are among the leaders in performing this validation -- probably the first IXP in North America!
Between Oct 1-3, Directors Reid Fishler, Mark Cordingley, and Theo de Raadt joined by Job Snijders attended NANOG 74 in Vancouver to meet other network and internet exchange operators.
On Sep 21, GTT (AS3257) joined YYCIX as a peer, with a restrictive policy.
On Sep 21, SBP Corporation (AS136621) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Sep 20, a new document was added (linked from the FAQ) which details the BGP communities supported at YYCIX. These industry-standard communities can be used by peers to perform various forms of traffic engineering.
On Sep 18, Accelerated Connections (AS21570) departs YYCIX following their acquisition by GTT. They were with us since May 2014. Sad to see a peer leave, but GTT services are now available in town.
On Sep 18, NETAGO (AS54359) increased their circuit from 1G to 10G.
On Sep 13, the residential subscriber arm of Xplornet Communications Inc (AS22995) joined YYCIX as a peer, supplementing the existing peering with the Xplornet Commercial Services group AS40473.
On Aug 28, YYC Net Lab (AS396302) joined YYCIX as a peer. YYC Net Lab is a not-for-profit academy teaching CCNA routing & switching, right here in Calgary.
On Aug 27, Boltn Hosting Limited (AS200358) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Aug 21, an additional YYCIX switch was brought up at Arrow Calgary datacenter, connected to City Hall switch at 2x10G.
On May 29, Nutrien (AS393891) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Mar 30, we announce that YYCIX has a looking glass where routes we carry can be inspected. Routes which fail IRR/RPKI/OriginAS or other validation can be identified because they are tagged with specific communities indicating the problem. Such routes are not re-announced to peers. Keep in mind a few of our peers do not participate in the route servers and instead depend on bilateral BGP sessions.
On Mar 16, Cloudflare traffic started flowing. Cloudflare also brings a DNS F-Root (f.root-servers.net) to YYCIX. Establishing a bilateral with Cloudflare is strongly recommended, please contact their peering group.
On Mar 11, major disruptive switch reconfiguration occurred. After this change, YYCIX operators can perform BCP 214 BGP session culling during maintainance operations to steer traffic away from the IX switches and minimize traffic loss and disruption.
On Mar 9, a redundant/diverse link was installed between City Hall and Shaw/Viawest using City of Calgary dark fiber and optics donated by Sean McKenzie.
On Mar 9, Columbia Basin Broadband (AS63052) increased their circuit from 1G to 10G.
On Mar 6, Cloudflare (AS13335) joined YYCIX as a peer. They invite peers to contact them and establish a bilateral.
On Feb 28, the minutes of the Nov 20, 2017 AGM were released. These remain draft, until approved at the next AGM.
On Jan 23, we received a Nexus 93180 donation from PCH to replace the old switch at Shaw/Viawest.
On Jan 17, Teksavvy (AS5645) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Jan 17, Snijders IT (AS15562) joined YYCIX as a peer. Snijders IT joined to provide anycasted services to facilitate performant access to open source projects. Snijders IT peers exclusively with the route servers.

2017
The 2017 AGM is scheduled for 5:30pm - 7:30pm, Nov 20 at

ATB Entrepreneur Centre
1110 17th Ave SW

Voting members are asked to mail the board to declare their participation. We appreciate knowing who represents each member ahead of time. Please send nominations to the board, or do so on the floor.
The room holds 35 -- subject to those limits, observers are welcome.
On Nov 14, Teksavvy made public they are building a new POP in Calgary currently and anticipate being connected to YYCIX very early next year.
On Nov 1, the route-servers started considering RPKI ROA records also valid for filter generation purposes. They have the same effect as IRR route objects.
On Oct 25, WiBand (AS15102) increased their circuit from 1G to 10G.
On Oct 24, the route-servers started applying fairly strict filters based upon various resources including IRRdb and PeeringDB. All peers using the route-servers are encouraged to ensure that their IRR and PeeringDB records are up to date.
On Oct 13, Xplornet (AS40473) increased their circuit from 1G to 10G.
On Oct 4, the link between City Hall and Datahive was upgraded from 4x10G to 2x40G --> 80G. Thank you for generous donations of 4 optics by Stephen Fulton, AXIA Connect, and Theo de Raadt.
On Sep 28, the switch at City Hall was upgraded. 25G, 40G, and 100G service are now available. One way to connect is with City dark fiber.
On Sep 20, Accelerated Connections (AS21570) increased their circuit from 1G to 10G.
On Sep 5, AXIA Connect (AS54182) increased their circuit from 1G to 10G.
On July 6, the minutes of the July 6, 2017 board meeting were released.
On May 25, Columbia Basin Broadband (AS63052) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On May 16, Verisign RIRS (AS26415) joined YYCIX as a peer. The RIRS server is a regional DNS J-root (j.root-servers.net) and authoritative server for .COM and .NET (b.gtld-servers.net).
On May 4, RIPE NCC K-root (AS25152) joined YYCIX as a peer. The K-root is one of the 13 Internet root domain servers, and joins the D-root and E-root provided by our peer PCH.
On April 11, iTel (AS16696) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On April 7, RF Now (AS46920) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On April 7, WiBand (AS15102) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On March 23, the minutes of the March 23, 2017 board meeting were released.
On March 20, two newer switches were donated by PCH. After a few days work service between DataHive and City Hall has been upgraded to 2 x 10Gb. 100Mb copper service is no longer available at DataHive.
On March 3, a special meeting of the members was called, date not yet set. Jim Clarke has resigned from the board. Subsequently, Robin Harder and Colin Bodor resigned as well.
On March 2, the second route server (206.126.225.253, 2001:504:2f::5:3339:253) was moved from DH to Q9. The route servers are now at different ends of the switching fabric, which provides greater redundancy. Peers who use the route servers are encouraged to connect to both for stability.
On Feb 28, Cybera (AS15296) increased their circuit from 10G to 20G. Our first 20G peer!
On Feb 27, the network time server at ntp.yycix.ca was brought back into service.
On Feb 19, Google (AS15169) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Feb 5, Hybrid Wireless (AS32738) reconnected to YYCIX after a 3 year hiatus.
As mentioned in the 2016 AGM minutes, Google is connecting, and on Feb 4 we have link!
On Jan 9, the minutes of the Nov 1, 2016 AGM were released. These remain draft, until approved at the next AGM.
On Jan 9, the minutes of the May 14, 2016 board meeting were released.

2016
On Nov 8, we created a page listing past contributors with a PayPal link.
The 2016 AGM is scheduled for 6:00pm - 9:00pm, Nov 1 at

Herald Room
The Hyatt Hotel
700 Centre Street S.E.

Voting members are asked to mail the board to declare their participation. Please send nominations to the board, or do so on the floor.
The room holds 50 -- subject to those limits, observers are welcome.
On Oct 28, ERA (AS30648) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Oct 26, Arrow Calgary (AS20119) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Oct 12, SEBO Data (AS395097) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Sep 27, Q9 (AS27272) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Sep 22, additional YYCIX switches were brought up at Q9 and Shaw Data Center & Cloud Solutions (ViaWest).
On June 16, AKAMAI (AS20940) joined YYCIX as a peer.

2015
On Nov 13, CANARIE (AS6509) joined YYCIX as a peer.
The 2015 AGM is scheduled for 5:00pm - 8:00pm, Oct 29 at

Hotel Arts
119 12 Ave SW, Calgary.

Voting members are asked to mail the board to declare their participation, or to request multimedia access. Please send nominations to the board, or do so on the floor.
The room holds 50 -- subject to those limits, observers are welcome.
On Oct 28, YYCIX placed a second switch at the City of Calgary. Refer to Locations for more details.
On Oct 27, an Akamai cache came online at Cybera. This cache is being made available to peers on YYCIX. A few days later, the Cybera connection was upgraded to 10G to provide headroom..
On Jan 8 AXIA Connect (AS54182) joined YYCIX as a peer.

2014
The minutes of the Dec 10, 2014 board meeting have been released.
The minutes of the Oct 29, 2014 AGM have been released. These remain draft, until approved at the next AGM.
The minutes of the Oct 29, 2014 board meeting have been released.
On Oct 29, Cybera (AS15296) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Oct 29, Catch Engineering (AS62993) joined YYCIX as a peer.
The 2014 AGM is scheduled for 6:00pm, Oct 29 at

Room #208 on the Second Floor
The Kahanoff Centre
105 12th Avenue SE
Suite 200
Calgary, AB T2G 1A1.

Voting members are asked to mail the board to declare their participation, or to request multimedia access. Please send nominations to the board, or do so on the floor.
The room holds 50 -- subject to those limits, observers are welcome.
On Oct 10, Cybera declared their intent to peer in the near future.
On Jun 9, RBBS Telecom (AS53349) joined YYCIX as a peer.
Monthly and yearly graphs have been added to the traffic graphing page. The longer term graphs demonstrate a steady growth in volume of low-latency local traffic over the exchange.
In response to a number of concerns expressed by new peers, on May 24 the board unanimously chose to release the offical Memorandum of Understanding (PDF) signed with Datahive in 2012. This details how the first peering cross-connect is always free, as long as it starts inside the datacenter, even from a pure telecom panel. It also constrains YYCIX from running vlans, leaving such services for Datahive's business.
On May 9, Accelerated Connections (AS21570) joined YYCIX as a peer.
The minutes of the Apr 14, 2014 board meeting have been released.
On Apr 7, O-NET (Olds Fibre Ltd.) (AS54841) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Feb 10, CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority) (AS55195) joined YYCIX as a peer. CIRA is responsible for managing Canada's .CA domain name registry, and represents the .CA registry internationally.

2013
The minutes of the Nov 20, 2013 board meeting have been released.
The minutes of the Oct 25, 2013 AGM have been released. These remain draft, until approved at the next AGM.
The minutes of the Oct 25, 2013 board meeting have been released.
On Oct 24, PCH (Packet Clearing House) (AS42 and AS3856) joined YYCIX as a peer. PCH offers up Anycast DNS services to the participants of the exchange, at sub-millisecond latency! PCH also engages in research initiatives to improve global network development.
The minutes of the Oct 24, 2013 board meeting have been released.
On Oct 24, City of Calgary (AS26025) joined YYCIX as a peer.
The time has come for the Annual General Meeting of YYCIX, the membership will vote for a new board of directors. Due to anticipated demand, the meeting has been moved to The Hotel Arts: 119, 12th Avenue SW in the Studio Room at 6:00PM, October 25th.
The minutes of the Oct 11, 2013 board meeting have been released.
Director Bob Kitella visited Nanog 59 in Phoenix to meet other network and internet exchange operators.
On Oct 9, Hybrid Wireless (AS32738) joined YYCIX as a peer.
Recently there are reports of individuals trying to discredit the YYCIX effort by attacking the character of the individuals involved, in particular pointing at a fake twitter account setup in the name of our network manager, or alleging threats of violence by others. Those stories are not true. Consider the agenda of those giving you such information. Please contact us if you have any further questions about those claims.
On Oct 3rd, we started publishing aggregate traffic graphs. The weekly graph is found on the main page, as well as a larger collection elsewhere. They are updated every 10 minutes.
On Sep 26th, Platinum Communications (AS40473) joined YYCIX as a peer.
On Sep 12th, NETAGO (AS54359) joined YYCIX as a peer.
Packet Clearing House have sent us a 10G switch and some other goodies. More on that later, or make a guess from reading the peers page...
The minutes of the Aug 29, 2013 board meeting have been released. New bylaws (PDF) have been adopted, and the AGM is scheduled for 6:00pm, Oct 25 at the ~~Catch Engineering Boardroom, #1100 940 6 Avenue SW, Calgary~~. The meeting was moved to The Hotel Arts; see above.
The minutes of the Aug 21, 2013 board meeting have been released.
On Aug 7th, Nucleus (AS26546) joined YYCIX as a peer.
A delegation from ARIN will visit Calgary on September 12 to present an all-day seminar. Visit ARIN on the Road to register for this free educational event. It looks like all YYCIX board and network admins will be attending.
An AS112 (RFC1918 DNS Sink) server has been installed as a peer. This locally answers a subset of DNS requests so they don't travel to the global DNS servers.
We have received a donation of a Brocade CER 2048CX switch, but our tech team have not settled the Brocade vs Cisco question. If a Nexus 7004 or Catalyst 4900M arrived tomorrow the argument might stop. For now, we continue running on the smallish Cisco.
On July 11th, Hurricane Electric (AS6939) joined YYCIX as a peer, exposing access to their network.
Proper IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes have been allocated from ARIN; as a result the peers were renumbered onto 206.126.225/24 and 2001:504:2f/48. A second route server was also installed.
YYCIX now has a GPS-receiver NTP service available as ntp1.yycix.ca. This provides a low-latency, low-jitter timing service. Peers should probably continue using network-based NTP servers, but add this into their pool.
Theo de Raadt had an opportunity to present a talk titled an Internet Exchange for Calgary (html) (pdf) at a Calgary Unix Users Group meeting. Directors Bob Beck and Mark Cordingley answered questions regarding governance and direction. A number of enthusiastic future peers were in attendance.
Director Bob Kitella visited Nanog 58 in New Orleans to meet other network and internet exchange operators. He announced the existence of YYCIX.
We have received a donation of two Brocade RX-4 switches, and will be replacing the (too small) Cisco Catalyst in the near future.
Hurricane Electric have published their new network map (PDF). They will be building new circuits Vancouver-Calgary-Winnipeg-Toronto to augment their global network. Their Calgary POP will be at Datahive!
YYCIX and Datahive were visited by a director of Hurricane Electric as part of the process of justifying expansion into Calgary. The plan is for links to Vancouver and Toronto. Based on sufficient transit pre-orders, they would install a POP in Calgary. For more information contact either Hurricane Electric or info@yycix.ca.

2012
YYCIX thanks CUUG (Calgary Unix Users Group) for the long-term loan of an IPv4 /24 netblock to use as 'peering prefix'. Allocation of a proper Critical Infrastructure IPv4/IPv6 prefix will occur when neccessary.
The Exchange Participation Rules are now available.
Operating as AS53339.
Switch is configured and installed at Datahive. The first route-server is installed and assisting peering.
Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between Datahive and YYCIX.
Our agreement creates a safe framework so a neutral IX can operate in a neutral datacenter.
YYCIX Internet Exchange Community Ltd is an Alberta Not-for-Profit (Dec 3, 2012), with initial directors Bob Kitella, Bob Beck, and Mark Cordingley.
Please call us either YYCIX or Calgary Internet Exchange.
Location selected: Datahive, 840 7th Avenue SW.
Located along the LRT line in downtown, this datacenter is in a very fiber rich environment.
Datahive is neutral and not associated with any Alberta-based carrier.