[Mispa-management-l] (Fwd) Re: [af-ix] IXP port fee

[Dr P Nyirenda]

MMC,

See port fees for IXPs in South Africa at:
https://www.inx.net.za/display/pub/Policy#Policy-Fees

Nishal expresses his views on this here below.

Regards,

Paulos
======================
Dr Paulos B Nyirenda
NIC.MW & .mw ccTLD
http://www.registrar.mw


------- Forwarded message follows -------
From:	"Nishal Goburdhan" <nishal at ispa.org.za>
To:	af-ix at af-ix.net
Date sent:	Thu, 20 Dec 2018 11:02:35 +0200
Subject:	[SPAM] Re: [af-ix] IXP port fee


On 19 Dec 2018, at 16:39, Dr P Nyirenda wrote:

> On 18 Dec 2018 at 21:55, Frank Habicht wrote:
>
>> Hi Dr Paulos,
>>
>> I think it is a good thing if an IXP can sustain itself financially.
>> As it happens, many value-adding services at an IXP come with
>> hardware
>> components, and even getting these [possibly donations] out of
>> customs
>> costs money.
>
> Thank you Frank for the details. Our Malawi ISP Association (MISPA)
> has agreed to work on
> operating our IXP more sustainably and that is why we are fumbling
> around for ideas and
> figures. Your contribution will greatly help us reach more detailed
> agreements. It is hard to
> run an IXP reliably without such resources.


i have a slightly different view to frank.  bear in mind that inx-za
does have port fees (see the faq at www.inx.net.za), but i´d like to
explain why, and why this is a good and bad thing sometimes.
ultimately, i think that you really want to think about what you want
your IXP to be doing, in the medium term, and then working out what´s
best for you, and it certainly won´t help having different viewpoints.

i am opposed to port fees in general;  this might sound strange, given
that inx-za has these;  but there are two other inx-za board members
on-list here as well, to confirm that i´m a continuous voice to
reduce, and to try to remove these.

switching hats quickly, the mantra that we use at PCH, is that peering
should reduce the "average per bit delivery cost" (APBDC) of the
network.  in simple terms, it means that moving your traffic, through
peering ports, should reduce the cost of your network, and if this is
not working, then there´s something wrong with the peering environment
for you.
charging a port fee, disincentives a reduction in APBDC.  it
disincentives networks from interconnecting and peering;  which is a
huge problem, particularly if the IX is still in its nascent stages, or
if the networks are small.  it discourages foreign networks from
connecting to you, especially if your fees are high.

i accept that sustainability is a huge concern;  but sustainability is a
meaningless word, if you don´t have actions to tie to this.  charging
port fees to build a large bank balance is an abuse of your
community´s trust.  yes, it´s true that there are costs that the IX
often has to deal with, so, perhaps it´s worth asking:  how do you
deal with those?  doc, i like that you´ve written:  "operating our
IXP more sustainably";  many others simply say:   "we want to charge
a fee .. " and seem to think that this is the only solution.

what are the costs that you have now?   the first that comes to mind, is
usually hardware.  it´s no secret that, if you need a new switch, or
to upgrade your existing ones, you can write to PCH, and we´ll happily
send you an upgrade;  we´ve done that to many of the IXPs here.  if
you need servers for BGP route servers, michuki has offered these many
times, and ISOC will send you equipment for that.  switches and
route-servers are, by far, the largest part of what you´ll need to run
the IX;  sure, you might need management equipment too.  the management
router that we use at JINX, is a cisco 7206VXR, that was manufactured in
2003  (so it´s 15years old now!)  that was *donated* to us by a peer.
they gave us six, actually, since these are no longer in use in their
network, and they had no need for it.  and because our management
network has to carry traffic for just our measurements/monitoring, as
well as traffic for the DNS nodes that we support, which is, all-in-all,
less than 20mb/s, this is already gross overkill.

btw, a cisco 2801, which will carry this same traffic load happily, and
still run ssh2, is $30 on ebay.  if you really have to, i would advise
you to buy 2x for redundancy!   :-)  or, be lazy like me, and ask your
membership who has old equipment that they´re willing to donate.  the
seattleix has a nice page on their website that lists donations that
they´ve received over time.  this culture of coming together, to make
something work for your community, is not as strange idea, as some may
think.

one concern that you might hear is that the IXP might need cash to clear
goods from customs;  one IXP once said to me, that they didn´t have
the $500 to clear the 10gb switch upgrade that PCH had donated to them
from customs.  when i found out, after four months, i offered to pay
this from my personal account, because i felt that it was important
that, given the challenges that that particular IX was facing, that they
perform the upgrade, and still be free.
i *did* note sadly, that in all the time that this was stuck in customs,
there was no general call to the IXP membership to ask for a donation.
i´m sure that many other networks in country, that actually use the
IX, would have felt the same that i did - that investing in this
important resource, was an investment into your community´s future.

so take hardware off the table, since there are well established wasy
(PCH has been doing donations for 20+years;  michuki can support your
server needs :-)) to obtain donations.  there are still other costs that
you might have to incur, like having to deal with power redundancy, etc.
  again, there´s no reason that these can´t be covered by a simple
costing analysis and presentation to your peers, and then soliciting
donations/funds *for the project* itself.  i know of several IXPs that
have done this;  raised capital for a particular venture *only*.

staff?  i always make a point of saying that its in the ISPs interests
to make sure that the IXP operates.  and its in the ISPs that you´ll
find the core skills that you´ll need to get the basic IX functions
operational;  understanding of bgp, snmp, and routing quirks.  a small
team of volunteers can easily manage this;  that´s how the JINX ran
for 19years, and still largely continues to operate.

so, leverage your community.  i am a strong believer of the spirit of
the community.  but that spirit is only as good, as the effort and the
energy that you put into growing your community.  so, do you have
community meetings (these are not big fancy events like afpif, etc) but
rather smaller, close-knit meetings to help your community get to
network?  these can be done quite cheaply;  a meeting-room at a local
company/university, even pub :-)   beer and pizza, which, can be easily
covered by any single organisation´s marketing budget.  during afpif,
kznnog (the upcoming NOG in durban, south africa) spoke how they do
this;  i believe the video should be online..

does your community know your challenges?  do they see opportunities
that they want you to invest in?  (i´ll expand on that in a bit).
and, a really fundamental point for me - do they believe that the work
you´re doing is for their benefit?   because if you can tick these
boxes, your work as an IX operator becomes a lot easier.

i mentioned that inx-za has port fees;  this is largely because we
started off, like most of you here, from the country´s ISPA.  in the
earlier days, just about all of the IX port fees were used in legal
battles against our horrid incumbent;  the "port fees" made a
convenient way of helping to raise revenue to do this.  nowadays,
that´s less of a concern (there are still legal battles ongoing).  our
community has instead _asked_ us to do things for them;  a few years
ago, the community _asked_ that we go multisite.  that, has ongoing
costs - equipment, and transmission across the cities.  but let me be
clear about this - we did this *because* our community asked for it.
this was not a "build it and they will come" scenario.  so, in the
context of:  "we want this, and we are willing to pay for it", which
is very much a south african business mentality, we´ve retained the
port fees, as a way to fund this multisite build.  although they´ve
been dropping annually, as transmission costs are reduced.  we now have
one 1/2day fte, responsible for 9sites in three cities.  so no large
staff complement.  and we still rely solely on our community to (1)
choose what we should be doing *for them*, and (2) funding this.

so, my advice is, if you can get by without it, don´t invest yourself
into the idea that port fees are how you should start, or grow your IXP.
  you do *not* need fees to be sustainable;  just think outside the box!
  sure, you might get to a point where your membership might start to
ask more than what´s needed by volunteers.
and i think that this is a good recipe for success;  rather than,
forcing costs down your peers throats _at the start_.   this is largely
my gripe with many new IXPs;  either you invest in too expensive
equipment/data-centre/staff, and then you force yourself into a
situation where you simply _have_ to raise funds to pay these off.  and
unfortunately, i can give you examples from across the world where this
has not worked out well  :-(
this is also why, there are now meetings to "avoid IXP stagnation".
when, instead, we should be meeting to "promote operator
interconnectivity between economies"  :-(


i think that, somewhere along the way, a portion of this IX
"industry" got distracted from what an IXP truly is meant to be;  a
neutral meeting place for peers to exchange traffic.  they got caught up
in industry trade shows  (vs. community events);  in marketing and
products  (vs. training, education, and advocacy);  in seeing the IX as
a business, instead of seeing it as a business-enabling tool.  whilst
i´m sure there are others that find this perfectly acceptable, i,
personally, find it quite sad.  because if this is a business, then, we
(on this list) are competitors.  and the community spirit of
collaboration, that, i
think, we need to find, to continue to build and grow africa´s
internet, heavily at risk.

so my view on IXPs, which you might find old fashioned, is that this is
a simple bandwidth exchange mechanism;  no complexity, and thus, no
politics, and no drama.  (we have annual elections that usually take
less than 3min, as compared to another non-profit we all know  :-))



> Do you have additional fees at TIX for providing content services like
> GGC, Akamai, etc ?

at INX-ZA, it´s a flat port fee.  we don´t provide "commercial
services";  instead, our services are things like BGP route
collectors;  route-servers;  as112.net,  RPKI validators, etc.  happy to
discuss those if you´d like.  at not cost, whilst we´re not
competitors  ;-)

as always, ymmv,
-n.

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