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Weekly Blog
The Any2 Exchange Weekly Blog will give the
Any2 community a view of announcements, news, thoughts, and other
information relative to the Any2Exchange and community.
Tuesday, 15 July
Initial upgrade to OW-MPT link in progress, and
will be completed this evening (NOTE: completed at 1930).
Final upgrade will happen once we take delivery on the new Foundry
RX-16 for Market Post Tower. Should not be more than a couple
weeks. Working on sFlow monitoring software now.
Membership appears to be picking up again.
This week we've received 4 additional orders (so far), and it
appears several more enquires and requests are in progress. We
have a target to attract at least 200 members (total) by the end of
this year. While aggressive, we do believe this is a very good
utility for our community, and the more members we attract the more
useful Any2 will become. The route servers are also picking up
members fairly quickly now, with more than 50 participating
networks.
The Northern California VLAN is also picking up
members pretty fast. This is particularly important for those
networks with a physical presence in both geographies, who do not
want to have both connections on the Los Angeles VLAN. All new
members in Northern California will receive IP addresses in the new
206.51.41.0 /24. Of course Northern California members will be
able to receive addresses from the Los Angeles LAN upon request, and
continue to have peering available with all Southern California Any2
members. We hope to have new route servers installed supporting the
Northern California VLAN within the next week (Thanks again Bob).
If you have any questions on the Northern California VLAN, please
send a note to any2@crgwest.com.
Friday, 11 July
NOTE:
We will add additional capacity
on the LA-SJ Any2 link over the next two weeks. Prior to making any
reconfiguration on switches we’ll send out a notice to all Any2
members. This upgrade will
also include moving the links off existing Cisco 6509s to Foundry
RX-16 switches. Once this is
complete we will be able to start providing sFlow data as requested
by Any2 members.
Thursday, 3 July
Two marketing-ish items today. IPv6 Transit
offers and a quick introduction to the Reston Exchange.
IPv6 Transit. One of our Any2 members and
facility tenants present at Market Post Tower and One Wilshire is
offering no cost IPv6 transit to any exchange member. This
network provider is rapidly becoming a dominant global IPv6 backbone
network. Send a note to
any2@crgwest.com and we will make the connection/introduction
for you.
Reston Exchange. Our new facility at 12100
Sunrise Valley Drive is now fully connected with our Washington DC
facility at 1275 K Street NW via fiber and DWDM gear. For
those networks desiring either cross connections, or Any2 access to
all other members at 1275 K Street, this is now available in the
same interconnected/distributed exchange (206.51.40.0/24
). Interconnections and Any2 connections are available at
100Mbps, GE, 10GE, and SONET protocols.
Tuesday, 1 July
NOTE: CRG West business offices
are closed on Friday, 4 July for a US national holiday.
Customer service and operations are still available 24x7 for any
problems or issues related to Any2 and other CRG West
facility-related items. Please open a trouble ticket if
you have any problems over the long holiday weekend.
From the Euro-IX mailing list (www.euro-ix.net):
As expected for this time of the year the
Euro-IX Member European traffic was down compared to the end of last
months totals by some -6.39% or -97Gbps, the same month last year
saw drop in aggregated peak traffic of -5.38%. Interestingly our
five Eastern European member IXPs saw an average increase in peak
traffic over the last month of 2.54%! Total European IXP peak
traffic is at 1.659Tbps (down on last month's total of 1.759Tbps).
On average the North American IXPs saw
smaller decreases in peak traffic at about -1.83% over last month
while in Asian region IXPs actually saw an increase in traffic at an
average of 4.13% which is the highest monthly increase in Asia since
October 2007 (7.77%).
Friday, 27 June
NOTE: We have added a new
Any2 Exchange Welcome Package
for new users. The PDF will be attached to all new order
completion forms, and will have additional instructions on
configuration, policies, and Any2 Easy. Feel free to download
and critique - the result could be a better experience bringing up
peering with new members!
Conference week. First part of the week we
attended the Voice Peering Forum in San Francisco. During this
VPF Stealth (conference organizer) expanded the program to include
carrier hotels and Internet exchange points in a couple break out
sessions.
Had a lot of good "sidebar" conversations during
the VPF, although to be honest not much is changing in the VoIP
world, other than a tremendous jump in VoIP minutes. I still
have a lot of trouble with the idea of discussing VoIP in terms of
minutes, rather than port size of bandwidth. Face it, if we
wanted to get billed on just minutes then there is little incentive
for the average person to consider migrating their telecom systems
into VoIP. it is a legacy approach to technology, not
disruptive, and is probably a topic that has kid of lost luster for
me over the past year. Long live Skype and Yahoo
communicators, SRV implementation, VoIP over Wifi - but on the
carrier side it is lipstick on a TDM pig.
Also attended Structure 08, a conference focusing
on "Cloud Computing." This was a truly exciting conference.
I am convinced cloud computing will part part of all our lives
within the next 2~3 years. What tremendous opportunities for
companies that have the foresight to join this emerging industry!
Here is one discussion (it is a paraphrase, sadly
I did not record the event) I will take with me from the conference:
Many people/IT managers till show reluctance
to put their data into "public" GRID or cloud environments.
They state security shortfalls (or perceived security shortfalls)
make putting data into public environment impossible. We;; I
would counter that it is analogous to putting money in a bank.
In the old days you wanted to touch and feel your money. It
was in your pocket, under your mattress, buried in your yard - but
it was physically within your grasp.
Cloud computing is kind of like a bank.
At some point people realized that physical money can be stolen,
burned in a fire, washed away in a flood, and it is gone - gone
forever. Putting your money in a bank allows you to get
insurance on the money, as well as turn the money into electronic
form.
Now you can withdraw your money from
virtually any ATM in the world, participate in online banking and
bill payment - regardless of your physical location.
Cloud computing is very similar. If you
have all your cookies in a single data center, then it is still at
risk of power failure, fire, earthquake damage, or other
loss/disruption. In the old days most analysts would give the
metric that following a catastrophic IT system loss or failure, only
20% of companies actually survived.
If your data exists in a "cloud," and is
distributed geographically within the cloud, you will probably have
significantly less risk than if your company ran all its IT
infrastructure within a single or backup silo. You will also
most likely experience better performance within your network (if it
also faces the "outside" or public - and who does not?).
Most of the conference speakers were on the
engineering side of the business, which was refreshing. Those
on the customer-facing side were also very good, and for the most
part focused their discussions on demographics and industry trends.
Cloud computing is great. It will affect
everybody, including CDNs, enterprise, and probably even the
virtualization of other formerly hardware-based industries such as
VoIP. Probably clip on to Any2 without any problem at all,
allowing more virtual presence models.
Had a lot of fun - good to get away and indulge
in technology again!
Wednesday, 18 June
There are a few places in my 32 years of telecom
operations that really stick out. In the 1980s, while I was a US Air
Force officer assigned in Okinawa, we had frequent call to visit
Anderson AFB in Guam. I have never met finer people, who are
as friendly and hard working as those I met in Guam, and hope I will
have an opportunity to return to that beautiful island.
Guam, if you don't know, is an island about 800
miles east of the Philippines, adjacent to the Northern Marianas
(Saipan, Tinian, Rota). Guam is important to the telecom world
as a major submarine cable junction, as well as home to some of the
finest beaches and diving in the world!
We are honored to announce GTA/TeleGuam Holdings
(formerly Guam Telecom Authority) is now a member of the Any2
Exchange. Guam may be small, but it is a very proud community, and
we are very happy to welcome GTA to Any2. We hope Any2 will
play some small role in making Guam's Internet access better.
Here is a predication. Given the amount of
cable already landing in Guam, and given the number of new Pacific
submarine cables planned to land in Guam, at some point in the
future Guam will be one of the most important telecom hubs in the
Pacific. Guam now has more high capacity cables landing on the
island than Hawaii. It is a central point between
Australia/New Zealand (ANZ), Southeast Asia, East Asia, and North
America. If there is an earthquake in any of the oceans
surrounding Asia - traffic will eventually re-route through Guam.
If there is a problem in ANZ, traffic will reroute through Guam.
We've been looking at Guam as a major junction
point for many years. Now, as Guam has solved electricity
problems that plagued the island for years, it is once again the
focus of interest as a location to build data centers, offering both
content distribution and disaster recovery potential for many
ANZ/Asian countries.
Guam has a stable government, good international
security, and with only occasional typhoons and earthquakes has
never suffered a catastrophic failure of infrastructure. Guam
has even ridden 8.2 magnitude earthquakes without significant damage
to any major infrastructure, including cable landing stations and
submarine fiber.
It is easy to talk abut the contributions a Tier
1 or Tier 2 Internet provide to public exchange points. It
goes without question those companies are major factors in our
world. However we will also contend that companies such as GTA
are the heart and soul of the global Internet. GTA brings
Internet and communications services to people thousands of miles
from the mainstream of Los Angeles and other global population and
economic centers, putting every man, woman, and child in Guam on a
level intellectual playing field with those in a San Marino or Palos
Verdes.
My hat's off to the folks at GTA for their
contribution to the Internet. We are a richer, better Internet
community as result of your efforts.
You can contact GTA at
ipadmins@teleguam.net
Are you planning to attend the VPF in San
Francisco next week? Structure '08? We'd love to meet you.
Send a note to any2@crgwest.com
if you will be in town, or have any other comments or suggestions on
how to make the Any2 community better!
Monday, 9 June
Survived NANOG 43 in Brooklyn. This was a
very good NANOG, and well attended with around 450 people. The
discussion were somewhat subdued, which was surprising given the
number of attendees. CRG West did have an opportunity to
participate in a panel discussing Internet Exchange Points in New
York. As Any2 is being deployed in our 32 Ave of the Americas
data center, the NANOG program committee thought it appropriate.
It may have been better to have this discussion
on a national level, rather than focusing on just the New York
market. Why? Because the US is a very large country,
with many large markets, all somewhat underserved with Internet
exchange points (compared to Europe). There were a couple
discussion items brought up, such as "should a single city market
have multiple exchange points?"
Our answer might be different from that of
our competitors. Of course anybody desiring to carry a
monopoly in a market will argue that multiple exchange points will
dilute the value of the exchange market. They will discuss how
multiple exchange points create inefficiency, and having a single
point for exchange is better for all members of the community.
You might argue, having a single exchange point
will eliminate competition, allowing the single operator to set
pricing at a level that will ensure profits, focusing their efforts
on high value members. The smaller members of the community
may actually (as in the case of some larger exchange points) be
forced to use an upstream Tier 2 network to have access to the
exchange point.
Any2 has, and will continue to have a policy that
the Any2 Exchange is a managed public utility. We have
standard pricing for access, and do not deny access to the exchange
for any network, CDN, applications, or VoIP company that may benefit
from accessing the Any2 community. As we do not manage
relationships between networks, any network desiring to restrict or
control their peering is welcome to peer with whatever internal
policy is appropriate for their company - or peering with all via
route servers if that is in the company's interest.
As a facility and IT utility operator, our
responsibility is to keep access and switching online, add features
as desired by the community, and respond to technology and the
industry as changes occur.
While we compete with exchange points in several
markets, mainly in California and DC/Virginia, we welcome
"competition" and even have an open "co-opetition" policy within CRG
West.
How can we encourage competition? The
Internet is changing. The volume of traffic supporting
entertainment is increasing at a staggering rate, as are other
Internet-enabled applications. For networks occupying carrier
hotels and data centers, getting to the core of both eyeball
networks and backbone/transient networks is essential. Anytime
we, as an industry, can work to eliminate backhaul, our customers
will benefit.
At some point in the future CRG West will work
more closely with our competitors to find a way to cooperate, and
hopefully develop an agreement to interconnect exchange points.
This will require a lot of work, as there is significant discrepancy
in pricing between exchange points, and there will be the (easily
solved) issue of who pays for the interconnection.
To remain competitive on a global scale, the US
Internet community needs to re-examine how we look at both exchange
points and transit Internet service. We need to be creative, and
find ways to further nurture startup companies and existing
companies to ensure their barriers to entry are reduced, and new
ideas can emerge. This will be the theme of our blog for the next
week or so. Please feel free to send your opinions or comments
to any2@crgwest.com
We have some great new members on the way - stay
tuned for the next new member update!
Friday, 30 May
Looks like Any2 has been invited to participate
in the IXP/BOF at NANOG 43. Hope you are able to attend and
let the panel know what is on your mind. Peering at Internet
Exchange Points in the US is very different than peering in other
countries, and if you want to know why then you should let the panel
have it with both barrels!
North American IXPs
Charlie Gucker, One Step, Moderator; John Savageau, Any2 Shrihari
Pandit, Big Ape; Lane Patterson, Equinix; Alex Reppen, NYCNAP; Akio
Sugeno, NYIIX; Christopher Quesada, Switch and Data
Abstract:
A look into NYC Focused peering and the exchange fabrics' reach into
buildings and participants across New York. During the presentation,
each exchange operator will be asked to give an overall update as to
membership, port speed counts and other technical information
related to the exchange operation.
The public Any2 Exchange directory is getting a
bit busy, mainly due to continued rapid growth of both exchange
points and members. We will try and separate the directories
into separate drop downs within the next week or so, as soon as we
get time to code the page.
Here is our presentation
Wednesday, 28 May
A special Any2 Exchange welcome to Guam
Telecom/GTA. The Any2 Exchange does have some very unique
members, and we hope GTA is able to take full advantage of the
rapidly growing Internet community at the Los Angeles exchange
point. Welcome GTA!
Contact Benjamin de los Angeles ( bench@gta.net ) to learn more
about GTA
May
Any2 Newsletter is now online. Dennis Eodice is the guest
columnist - please check out his advise for new peering managers!
Friday, 23 May
We are getting ready to head to NANOG 43 in New
York. CRG West and Any2 look forward to meeting everybody and
catching up on industry and tech trends. We also look forward
to introducing our newest data center at 32 Ave of the Americas to
anybody with a few minutes time.
This should be a very productive NANOG
Tuesday, 20 May
Any2 traffic follows a funny pattern.
Compared to Amsterdam, LINX, or DE-CIX, which show a very logical
and predictable pattern, Any2 traffic is really all over the place.
There is a bit of consistency in times that traffic is highest -
usually from 1800 PST to 0330 PST. This is due to the high
volume of networks peering from Asia. It is fairly easy
to see where traffic is going through Any2, and will get better once
the Ciscos are completely out of the network and we are able to
start providing sFlow data from the Foundry switches.
Seeing the differences in Any2 traffic versus
other IXPs is quite interesting. Although we have
started to add more American networks recently, the traffic volume
on average American network ports is quite low compared to Asian and
European ports.
Still brings up the question, "why don't
Americans peer at the same level as Europeans and Asians?"
Will reduced port costs, dilution of Tier 1 network influence, or
industry consolidation have an effect on how American IXPs perform
versus their European counterparts?
As bandwidth requirements continue to grow, we
will continue to work with the Any2 community to ensure the Any2
Exchange is providing a service that enables, rather than impedes.
With a fixed line and tenant base of nearly 400 networks within One
Wilshire, 120 networks within Market Post Tower, and additional
networks at Milpitas and Wilshire Annex, Any2 should easily be the
largest and best IXP in our industry. Let us know if you have
any additional ideas on how we can bring in more networks, and
increase the value of being connected to Any2.
Friday, 16 May
This was a busy week for installations on Any2.
I'll send out a detailed member's update letter on Monday when I
return to Los Angeles. Perhaps the most interesting
development was installation of an F-Root server on the Los Angeles
and San Jose exchange LANs. Any2 member's can now direct their
queries to the F-Root server located at:
I'll send out the new San Jose LAN addressing in
the member's update
More to follow on Monday or over the weekend.
I'd also like to welcome Jerome Favis to the Any2
team as the project lead engineer. He also responds to
any2@crgwest.com, Any2 trouble
tickets, and general engineering and product development.
Keith Kuhlman is still on the team, but focusing more efforts on OSS
development.
Please keep us in mind when you have ideas that
would benefit the Any2 community. john
Friday, 9 May
In any business we need metrics to determine our
performance. In most cases that is through identification of a
"unit" of operation, and determining the success or failure of your
company based on cost, revenue, and performance based on that unit.
In the old days data centers might have used "cabinet equivalents"
as their unit. How much does it cost to build a data center,
bring in electricity, and deliver communications to a cabinet?
How much revenue does that cabinet generate? The delta?
 Of
course units change, and most data centers are moving to a
kilowatt/square foot model of units. If you follow Gestalt Law
or systems theory and apply that to business you will expect that
"nothing is stable and things are always changing," a "system is
adaptive and will change as needed to respond to new stimulus," and
the "future is unpredictable."
This tells us that if we are not adaptable,
single rigid systems will not easily survive additional stimulus,
unless it is a very unique system element that is more powerful than
all other stimulus. In this case the powerful stimulus
actually creates a potential point of failure for the health of an
entire system.
How does this relate to Any2 and the Internet?
Let's look at a couple other topics within systems theory :
-
The parts of a system must communicate with
each other
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The system is always changing
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The behavior of a system cannot be predicted
from the behavior of its parts
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An organization near death will stagnate and
its parts will begin to wither
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If there is too much top down control
creativity and productivity will be lost
-
A system as a whole works differently than
its parts
-
Parts alone cannot duplicate a system
-
A small stimulus may have a large effect, or
no effect at all
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Parts cannot contain the whole
-
Energy and information are constant inputs
and outputs of a healthy system, keeping the system in a
state of flux and change
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No single element can control a system, and
if it tries, the entire system is at great risk for failure if
the dominant element fails
(from James Glieck, "Chaos: Making a New
Science")
Any2 is designed and implemented with the vision
of providing a low-barrier location where parts of our Internet
community and system can communicate with each other.
There are many additional jewels available in
systems theory. Understanding more about systems, chaos
theory, and Gestalt Law might help those new to the Internet
business understand not only where they may fit in the big picture,
but also fully understand opportunities for innovation, change, and
new system stimulus are healthy and essential components of of the
Internet. Being a small part of a system in some cases can
bring just as much value to the system as large parts and subsystems
- and again the system needs change to continue growing and
remaining healthy.
Do we need to make some correlation or examples
within our Internet community?
-
Regulation of a system may prevent creativity
and innovation
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A component of a healthy system becoming too
powerful may result in a broken system or development of a new
system which will bypass the powerful element
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Disruptive technologies such as VoIP or HTML
may have profound effect on the overall Internet system - or
potentially no long term effect at all
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or others as you can develop
Over time business results generally follow what
we know of systems theory and Gestalt Law. In an environment
such as Any2 or CRG West data center facilities (you can add your
own IXP or data center as needed to complete the thought), we have a
very large, diverse, and innovative community. Members of the
community come from Tier 1 carriers, ISPs, call home direct, VoIP,
CDN, gaming, enterprise, government, telephony - almost anything
that communicates or entertains can be found within one of our
facilities.
We begin to see our roles as a location which
facilitates and nurtures the innovation and creativity of our tenant
or customer community (of course while making a profit for the
owners). If we do not make every attempt to enable our clients
to do better and more innovative business, then we are becoming an
negative stimulus to the system, forcing the system around us to
find a better conduit for system growth and direction.
CRG West and Any2 intend to continue
providing a positive stimulus to our community. As such we
strive to continue being as open as possible to new ideas and change
- with the only guideline that we will also make every attempt to
remain neutral to our community. All Any2 members, whether a
Tier 1 Internet company or a startup gaming company will continue to
receive an equal voice in developing both Any2, as well as CRG West
facilities. We might not accept all ideas (some things do cost
money and require budgets, planning, approvals, etc., etc., etc...),
but we will ensure all ideas and suggestions receive the forum
deserved.
We live for ideas and feedback - please give us
yours! any2@crgwest.com
Tuesday, 6 May
Work on expanding the Northern California
Exchange continues, and new members are being setup in the
206.51.41.0 /24 range. All members can still connect with with
other members in San Jose and LA. Send a note to
any2@crgwest.com if you have
any questions. All affected members have already been notified
of setup and process information.
Looks like network use of PeeringDB to show Any2
exchange participation is picking up. More than 100 networks
have updated their Any2 access profile, with 98 in the LA/San Jose
exchange. Result is more enquiries by potential new members
for Any2 access. As with any exchange, the more members, the
more value our peering community provides to all members.
Please keep up your PeeringDB profile, and of course feel free to
introduce more members to Any2. We will continue to make all
attempts to keep costs at a minimum, while providing a powerful and
stable peering and exchange platform.
Any2Easy route servers now have about 50 networks
available, and the number is growing nicely. This still
remains a great way to easily connect with a large number of Any2
members. We plan to have Any2Easy available in Miami,
Reston/Washington DC, and Chicago by summer. Thanks again to
Bob Evans for managing this utility.
Tuesday, 29 April
Greetings from Interop Las Vegas. CRG West
is participating and probably even more, indulging in the display of
new technologies related to network, transmission, and the Internet
business. We'll put together some impressions and reviews of
what we find at Interop over the next couple days. This
appears to be a much bigger show than in previous years, so should
be a lot of fun.
Tuesday, 22 Apr 2008
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NOTE: CRG
West has an opening for an Any2 Exchange project manager.
If you know of anybody who may be interested in the
position, please send a note to
jsavageau@crgwest.com
|
Have you been reading through the debate on NANOG
mailing lists and other media on the topic "Internet to hit capacity
by 2010?" There are several distinct elements to the
discussion.
Backbone capacity shortfalls. One part of
the discussion concerns being able to distribute multicast or high
definition broadcasts over existing infrastructure.
Store and Forward Content. Discussion on
the capacity of networks to handle large volumes of media-on-demand.
Expert Analysts and Political Activists.
How those supporting political and big-business interests on the
topic of Internet capacity and policy are representing themselves in
positions appearing altruistic - but in reality represent the
government and large carriers.
We all know doing business in North America is
very different than Europe and most developed Asian countries.
Face it, the geography is very different. The largest countries in
Europe can fit into a large county in Texas, Alaska, California, or
Montana. A large network presence in Los Angeles is relative
to a large network presence in Miami or New York.
If media distribution is the greatest concern to
network and Internet planners, then we need to solve distribution
challenges in North America. Those challenges are:
-
The cost of long distance media distribution
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The capacity of long distance transit
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The capacity and cost of local distribution
(eyeballs)
The cost and capacity of local distribution is
becoming more manageable. Whether it be wireless distribution,
cable TV/cable Internet, or fiber to the home - in metro areas we
are getting a lot better at delivering large numbers of bits to end
users. The problem is getting access to the content our
eyeballs desire.
Clearly a site such as One Wilshire or Market
Post Tower can facilitate distribution. A carrier hotel or
data center adjacent to a carrier hotel allows us to connect a local
eyeball network to a high concentration of content providers through
direct connections or an Internet Exchange Point/IXP, reducing our
dependence on large Tier 2 or Tier 1 transit networks to deliver the
content. Result is better network performance, lower transit
costs, and refocusing our efforts and capital on increasing capacity
to our end users.
That works in larger cities with a significant
concentration of carriers, ISPs, CDNs, and other network-enabled
applications. The problem in distribution is not Los Angeles,
Miami, or New York. The problem comes when eyeballs in
Fayetteville, Arkansas or Baudette, Minnesota want the same level of
performance on their network as those in major cities.
Baudette does not have a carrier hotel or data center, nor is there
a large concentration of content delivery for media available within
the local area. The best we can do today is push content as
far from the "core" as possible, and attempt to reduce the impact of
backhauling traffic from a large distribution point either directly,
or by using a transit Tier 1 or Tier 2 ISP.
There are data centers available within a
reasonable proximity of most smaller towns throughout the North
American geography. Those who choose to live further outside
of the urban world may also not be the most aggressive users of
technology, and may at some point be a smaller priority for
extremely high performance Internet links, or even more probably
have dedicated VSAT connections to bring entertainment and
communications to their individual locations. We are not
trying to solve all problems for all people, but if we can envision
a model that meets the needs of 90% of the population, we are
probably going in the right direction.
Let me throw one idea over the transom.
Consider that eyeballs want content, and there are probably several
hundred distributors of content in operation around the world.
Consider that if we have public data centers in place reasonably
close to the "eyeball edge," then we might be able to look at some
creative models on how to push content to the edge.
An enterprising company might be able to look at
the data center and build a larger, utility media caching model
using disk virtualization, utility/compute on demand, and
multicast-repeating to their local access networks and end users.
This could either be to support access network caching based on
local requests, store and forward by partnership or subscription to
larger CDNs, or subscriptions for recast of individual streams from
media sources. The intent will always be to reduce access
(eyeball) network dependence on transit providers.
Is the idea of pushing content to the edge a
"band aid" solution? Probably, but it is a band aid that could
last up to 5 more years. This is until we are able to build
better models of media compression, or completely replace existing
cables with IP over power or other emerging transmission technology.
Please give us your ideas or comments
any2@crgwest.com
Friday, 18 Apr 2008
CRG West is pleased to announce a new Any2
Internet exchange for our Market Post Tower and Valley Exchange
facilities. The new upgraded Any2 Bay Area Exchange brings existing
networks and new networks 10 Gigabit cost effective peering in the
Bay Area of California. CRG West continues to accept new Any2
members who are either existing tenants, or networks that are not
tenants but can interconnect to either Market Post Tower/MPT (San
Jose) or Valley Exchange/VE (Milpitas) from outside our facilities.
The Any2 Bay Area Exchange is powered by new Foundry switches and
MRV DWDM equipment for inter-connectivity between our Bay Area data
center and carrier hotel sites. The DWDM equipment uses diverse
redundant fiber paths to ensure uptime and reliability between MPT
and VE.
Existing networks may join the new Any2 Bay Area Exchange at any
time, keeping both their current connection and connect to the new
Any2 Bay Area Exchange. All new networks at Market Post Tower and
Valley Exchange will be connecting to the new Any2 Bay Area Exchange
network in San Jose.
Market Post Tower and Valley Exchange participants who would like to
connect to the distributed network need only request an IP Address
and to have their Any2 port trunked / tagged. The VLAN for the
California distributed network is 100 and the NEW Market Post Tower
/ Valley Exchange is VLAN 102. This request can easily be made by
sending a note to any2@crgwest.com,
or putting in a service request through the Customer Portal.
Very soon we will add a new Any2Easy route server
for the Any2 Bay Area Exchange.
The Any2 Bay Area Exchange is needed to
accommodate fast membership growth within Any2 - both in the LA
area, as well as northern California. The Any2 Bay Area
Exchange, as well as Any2 within the Los Angeles area, allows nearly
unlimited traffic within each geography. This is important as
we continue to see rapid growth in 10GE connections. The
existing link between San Jose and One Wilshire will remain, however
it is clear this link will not support additional high bandwidth
peering between locations as driven by 10GE interfaces. We
will keep the link up, however it is most appropriate for peering at
levels below 100Mbps.
We hope the Any2 community is as excited about
this new, high performance IXP model as we are at CRG West.
With about 130 networks connected to Any2 within California, it is
clear we will have to continue listening to our members and adding
new services as we move ahead.
In the Los Angeles area One Wilshire and the
Wilshire Annex are also connected via DWDM in an identical
configuration as MPT/VE, and both sites support 10GE connections and
high capacity traffic between the sites.
We are very interested in your feedback regarding
Any2, and in particular the upgrades being made to the California
network. Please send us a note at
any2@crgwest.com if you would
like your opinions or voice heard.
Tuesday, 15 Apr 2008
We've had a
couple busy weeks at CRG West. Mainly in the data center side
of our business, focusing on projects in New York and Reston
(Virginia). The Reston facility has one of 10 IDC spaces ready
for operation, and the team is already provisioning customers in the
first space. Reston is going to be fun, as we have also
contracted for delivery of dark fiber from Reston to our other
facility in Washington DC. Much like the DWDM gear connecting
Wilshire Annex to One Wilshire, Milpitas to Market Post Tower, and
the Miami Exchange to the Miami community, this DF will have DWDM
equipment installed allowing the meet-me-room at 1275 K St in
Washington to be fully interconnected with the MMR at our Reston
Exchange.
Any2 in Chicago,
Washington/Reston/Miami/Boston is in a charter membership period.
If you are considering connecting to Any2 in any of those locations,
or would like to be in a charter membership, please let us know.
We will plan to keep charter memberships open for the remainder of
this year. Send us a note at
any2@crgwest.com for more details and information. As with
the California Any2 locations, we will open Any2 access in those
locations to both CRG West facility tenants, as well as networks not
located within CRG West data center facilities. Although
networks connecting from the outside will need to make their own
arrangements with metro carriers to connect to our facilities.
One new member
this week - Atlantic Metro. We'll send out a member's update
on Friday with their information, or you can check the Any2
directory.
Finally, another
push for participation in the PeeringDB.com project. PeeringDB
states their objective as:
"The purpose of this project is to
facilitate the exchange of information related to Peering.
Specifically, what networks are peering, where they are peering,
and if they are likely to peer with you."
"Whether you are an established IP
backbone network, or are just beginning to consider peering and
are exploring potential locations, "Who can I peer with, and
Where?" is one of the most important questions which must be
answered. Historically, the only lists of potential
peering partners at a given exchange point or carrier neutral
colo facility have been maintained by the individual operators
of these services. These lists have also proven to been very
sparse on information, sometimes very difficult to keep up to
date, and have rarely included detailed information about a
potential peering partners' policies. Also, since these lists
are operated by vendors promoting a specific service, larger
networks have been forced to maintain information on potentially
dozens of lists scattered across the Internet."
"PeeringDB hopes to build on this process
by providing a single centralized source where peering networks
can maintain their own information for all exchange points and
private interconnection facilities worldwide. By providing the
end user networks with a single source, and a simple and
automated web interface, we hope that they will be able to
easily provide and maintain this information over the long term.
We also hope that this prove to be a valuable resource for
networks who are either looking to begin peering, or considering
new peering locations."
www.peeringdb.com
Any2 has attracted new members due to existing
Any2 members updating their peering records, locations, policies,
and other contact information at PeeringDB. As with all
Internet Exchange Points/IXPs, the value of community increases
exponentially with every new participant. Any2 has
127 networks connected in LA, and another large number in San
Jose/Milpitas. Our peeringDB database record shows 81
networks. Any2 cannot update the data base - that is only
possible by each participating network. So, the bottom line is
that we'd like our members to help themselves, and the Any2
community by considering active participation in PeeringDB.
Friday, 4 Apr 2008
Spent the past few days at two conferences in Las
Vegas. CTIA (Wireless) and AFCOM (Data Center). Main
point of interest is how to cool data centers when tenants need to
bring their space north of 200 watts/sqft. Electricity, while
always a challenge, is not the main issue. How to extract heat
from data centers is the issue. Lots of great new products
coming out for extracting heat, but certainly no earth shaking
innovations or new technologies on the horizon. Most solutions
use existing basic cooling technologies and add additional heat
extraction features to cabinets, attempting to isolate the heat
coming out of cabinets and force the heated air into a CRAH or CRAC
unit return.
This might not be a big issue for the network
folk among us, but is certainly probably the most challenging
problem faced by CDNs with large server farm and disk farm
deployments.
Have completed the current list of 10GE upgrades,
so no networks are currently hitting the wall on port capacity.
If you are running multiple GigE ports, and need to upgrade your
Any2 connection to 10GE, let us know. Have 12x 10GE ports in
service at One Wilshire.
Friday, 28 March
Had a good member's meeting. Discussion
topics to follow. One of the topics was related to IP
addressing for various Any2 Exchange Points. All new
connections at Market Post Tower and the Valley Exchange will go
into VLAN 102. VLAN 100 members are still accessible from MPT
and Valley. Send a note to
any2@crgwest.com if you have any questions on either VLAN 102
addressing or routing.
You can look at a copy of CRG West's presentation
HERE
Here is a listing of Any2 IP addressing for both
IPv4 and IPv6:
One Wilshire AND Wilshire Annex, Los
Angeles
VLAN 100
206.223.143.0/24
2001:504:13:0:0:0:0:0/64
2001:504:13:0:0:0:0:1
1275K Street, Washington DC
VLAN 101
206.51.40.0 /24
2001:504:13:1:0:0:0:0/64
Market Post Tower AND Valley Exchange, San Jose
VLAN 102
206.51.41.0 /24
2001:504:13:3:0:0:0:0/64
70 InnerBelt, Boston, Massachusetts
VLAN 103
206.51.42.0 /24
2001:504:13:4:0:0:0:0/64
427 LaSalle, Chicago, Illinois
VLAN 104
206.51.43.0 /24
2001:504:13:5:0:0:0:0/64
Miami Exchange, Miami, Florida
VLAN 105
206.51.44.0 /24
2001:504:13:5:0:0:0:0/64
32 A of A, New York
VLAN 106
206.51.45.0 /24
2001:504:13:6:0:0:0:0/64
Monday, 24 March
We have about 25 networks RSVPed for the Member's
Meeting. This should be a great turnout. Of course, to
further promote participation in the exchange, we welcome all
interested parties, whether members or not to join the meeting.
If you are an Any2 member, and have colleagues or contacts at
networks that may be interested in either joining Any2, or learning
more - please make the referral and feel free to invite them to the
member's meeting. Hopefully this will be a great opportunity
for them to not only learn more, but also network with
representatives from other Any2 members. Just send a note to
any2@crgwest.com with the
contact info so we can ensure security is prepared.
Presentations scheduled so far are from:
-
Packet Exchange
-
Foundry
-
Arbinet
-
Anagran
-
Fiber Internet Center
Still have time for one or two additional pitches
if you want to give your company a bit of facetime with the Any2
community.
2 additional members on track for joining this
week, one in LA, one at Valley Exchange in Milpitas.
Wednesday, 19 March
Any2 Member's Meeting Update. We have three
companies scheduled to give presentations during the member's
meeting. Still have room for about two additional
presentations. I'd also encourage members to invite peering or
network coordinators from networks who may be considering joining
the Any2 Exchange, as this will give them an open forum to ask
questions, and have dialogs with other Any2 members on issues
related to peering, peering technology, and general professional
networking.
So far attendance looks good. I will also
open a conference line for call-in attendees.
Wilshire Annex is a CRG West data center located
at 900 N. Alameda, Los Angeles 90012 if you need to do a
Google Maps to find your way.
Tuesday, 11 March
Any2 Member's
Member's Meeting is still on track for 27 March.
Items currently on the agenda for discussion include:
-
San Jose/Milpitas system upgrades (10GE)
-
San Jose/Milpitas IP address restacking
-
IP Addressing for entire exchange
-
Update new sites in Chicago, Boston,
Washington, Reston
-
Review exchange performance in past 6 months
-
Open floor for members
-
Open discussion to reinforce product and
service growth for exchange
Please send a note to
any2@crgwest.com if you have
items you would like to add to the agenda, or would like to give a
presentation to the attendees. The Any2 Member's meeting is
open to all Any2 Exchange members, and other interested persons or
companies.
10:00 - Any2 Advisory Board
13:00 - General Member's Meeting
Traffic has dropped in the past week. This
is mainly due to two of the larger members reducing their peering
traffic. We expect traffic to increase again as two other
members move from bundled GE port channels to 10GE ports.
Traffic on link between MPT and OW is still
within a comfortable range. We are looking at potential
upgrades on the link, and will move ahead if three is a potential
for additional growth.
Wednesday, 5 March Update
The link is
restored. Currently we are using capacity from MZIMA
while Level 3 repairs ADM equipment supporting our wavelength.
Some dedicated circuits are still not completed, as Level 3 needs to
replace cards in their One Wilshire equipment. Any2 traffic
should be fully normalized.
Wednesday, 5 March
The wavelength connecting Any2 from One Wilshire
to Market Post Tower is currently down. We have opened a trouble
ticket with the carrier and are escalating to restore this link. All
other interconnections between the buildings on the same wavelength
are also down.
One Wilshire - Wilshire Annex peering is normal Market Post Tower –
Valley Exchange peering is normal
We’ll send a restoral notice and explanation as soon as possible
John Savageau
Managing Director
CRG West
Wednesday, 27 February
From APRICOT in
Taipei
This has been a
pretty good conference. Main topics of interest have been
related to IPv4 address space depletion and the need to embrace
IPv6. Very honest and robust discussion from presenters and
attendees who are trying to go to management and request funding for
IPv6 deployment (equipment, staffing, business case changes) without
a direct relation to attributable revenue.
While many
people simply create a harmony on the topic affirming their
understanding of the problem, a few people actually showed some good
thought and execution leadership. Most of the presentations
are available at the APRICOT website (
www.apricot.net ).
Any2 has been
providing IPv6 address for over a year. So far we have about
25 networks actively peering at v6, and are issuing IPv6 addresses
automatically with all new Any2 members. Our route servers
(Any2Easy) now fully support IPv6, but we know there is probably
more we could be doing to support IPv6 within the Any2 community.
We will be on the lookout for new applications or services, and of
course would be very happy to listen to your ideas how we might be
able to do better - or even better if you have a suggestion for a
new IPv6 support service.
We will pass on
more topics from APRICOT as the conference continues
any2@crgwest.com
Thursday, 21 February
Well, another
NANOG in the history books. NANOG 42 in San Jose was a great
event, and we certainly had a great opportunity to listen to the
leaders and innovators of not only the US Internet community, but
also the global Internet community. The main topic I came way
with is "get ready for IPv6. Get ready as quickly as
possible."
Send us a note
at any2@crgwest.com if you
would like to get an Any2 T-Shirt. We'll send them out until
we run out of stock, so the sooner you ask the better your chance of
getting a shirt. If your size is an "L," even a better chance!
Next week CRG
West will participate in the APRICOT conference in Taipei. The
Any2 Exchange in California has a very large number of Asian
carriers, networks, and content providers on the exchange, so it is
very important for us to keep on listen mode to best understand and
meet the needs of our Asian members. If you are at APRICOT,
and have time to tell us more about your expectations for an
American Internet Exchange Point or carrier hotel, please send us a
note at any2@crgwest.com.
Sadly, as most Americans, I don't think our CDMA phones will travel
to Taipei, so we'll have to set it up on email!
Monday, 11 February
February
Any2 Newsletter is now
online. This edition of the Any2 Newsletter features articles from
Nigel Titley (EasyNet) on the future of IPv4, Chris Galante on data
center security, an introduction to the Atlanta Internet Exchange,
and discussion on the topic of network disaster recovery planning.
NANOG42 is one week away. Hope all Internet
members are able to stop and say "hello" to the CRG West team while in
San Jose.
Wednesday, 6 February
Chicago may be the Any2 surprise of 2008.
We are unexpectedly taking quite a few orders for Chicago Any2, and
it appears this will not end anytime soon. We will kick off a
Chicago Any2 promotion at NANOG next week, offering a charter
membership period at 427 S. LaSalle, similar to when we kicked off
Any2 in California. New members will go out at the end of this
week in a member's update message.
We distributed about 50 Any2 (A Better Internet
by Design) T-Shirts at NANOG in Albuquerque, and everybody appeared
to like the shirt and design. We've made another order, but to
get one of the new shirts you will have to join us at NANOG 42 in
San Jose. Even our friends at competitive IXPs were sighted
wearing the shirts behind closed doors! Contact
Ogechi Ogamba for more
details.
10GE access is functional at MPT and Valley
Exchange, and will be available in Chicago with the first 10GE
order. All new Any2 switches are based on Foundry RX-xx series
switch, and are all 10GE ready.
Monday, 4 February
We are ready for 10GE connections in San Jose
(Market Post Tower/55 S Market) and Milpitas (Valley Exchange).
The only issue we need to be careful with is the bandwidth between
San Jose and One Wilshire. Switching within San Jose/Milpitas
will remain unrestricted, however we may have to limit traffic sent
between North and South California. CRG West is working on a
business model that will allow us to increase capacity between the
sites to 10GE, however we may have to look at a couple different
models of pricing.
Initially we were able to take advantage of some
available unused capacity on a wavelength we had connecting One
Wilshire and Market Post Tower together for primarily TDM circuits.
We are now running at about 70% utilization on that link (2GE).
If you are in San Jose and need, or would like to
upgrade to 10GE, let us know and we'll start the provisioning
process. any2@crgwest.com
Thursday, 31 January
Any2 Member's
meeting is set for 27 March in Los Angeles. Please mark your
calendars. Please let us know as soon as possible if you have
agenda items or would like to give a pitch/presentation at the
meeting.
Two submarine
cables cut in the Middle East last night. Lots of Internet and
telecom service disrupted. CRG West has supported quite a few
emergency splices and cross connects, and some Any2 traffic has
increased to Europe and India. PLEASE contact
any2@crgwest.com if you need
any special or emergency support on your Internet connection, or
noc@crgwest.com for other
non-Internet emergency services needed to restore telecoms affected
by this cable disruption.
We'd like to
congratulate Tom Guinn, SVP Construction for CRG West, on his recent
award from ClimaCool for designing the "greenest" HVAC and chiller
concept for 2007.
Tom has designed
and managed construction in most of CRG West's US data centers and
carrier hotels, and has not only the interests of CRG West and our
valued tenants as a priority, but also our environment. CRG
West operations applauds Tom on his great effort. We all want
great data centers, and we all want to protect our environment.
CRG West looks
forward to meeting you at NANOG 42 in San Jose. The
attendee list is growing by the day, and CRG West is really excited
about hosting this great event. Hopefully you will have a
chance to visit our San Jose (Market Post Tower) carrier hotel/data
center while in town, as well as our newest data center site in
Milpitas (Valley Exchange).
Finally, I had a
chance to give the keynote speech at the Metro Ethernet Forum in San
Diego this week. Venue was in Rancho Bernardo - smack in the
middle of the burn area from last autumn's major fires. Really
horrifying to see the scope and size of the fires, but after the
recent rains in California amazing to see how quickly nature jumps
back from disaster.
The Metro
Ethernet Forum had about 350 delegates from around the world.
Great turnout, and very interesting discussions. Ethernet has
a great future.
Wednesday, 23 January
Following the PTC conference in Honolulu was the
Techs in Paradise 08 (TIP08) conference, and Interenet2 meeting at
the University of Hawaii. Had an opportunity to talk with
several delegates to the conference.
It was refreshing to be around young people who
are full of great ideas, visions, and hopes for their involvement in
the Internet or Internet-ish networks of the future.
University students attending conference workshops, as well as older
folks who never crossed over to the commercial world.
Listening to these guys talk gave me renewed hope the future network
is in good hands.
We are preparing to deploy 10GE ports to all
California Any2 sites. This will meet higher performance
peering needs for our Market Post Tower and Milpitas users, as well
as extend 10GE from Wilshire Annex to One Wilshire. We will
still throttle down the link from MPT to One Wilshire until we can
justify increasing capacity through business cases. It
is, and will be, our intent to keep prices as low as possible for
all users.
Please let us know if your company is a candidate
for 10GE access in any of the California locations - even if just
for planning. This will help us prioritize the purchase and
installation of individual node equipment at both sites.
Recurring pitch for IPv6
- if you are ready to try IPv6 peering, just let us know.
The route servers are set up to handle IPv6 peering now, and issuing an
address takes about 15 seconds. The Any2Easy route server does
support IPv6, which should make it much easier to establish peering
sessions for network administrators.
Thursday, 17 January
Greetings from
Honolulu. We've just finished PTC-08, and it was one of the
better conferences CRG West has attended in the past two years.
Of particular interest was conversations we had with Asian network
providers and carriers. A lot of great ideas, and a lot of work for
the American companies to ensure we continue to meet their needs at
carrier hotels and data centers.
Next activity is
NANOG 42
in San Jose.
We are
tentatively planning the next Any2 Member's meeting for 27 March.
Let us know if this date does not work for you, and please recommend
an alternate date. We would also like to solicit additional
presentations, or training sessions from either members or select
vendors. If you have expertise in IPv6 strategy and planning,
we would be very happy to solicit your participation.
One interesting
story from Honolulu. A colleague of mine from Hong Kong tried
calling me several times from his duel band cell phone. Very
spotty success. I tried calling him from my US mobile phone,
and could not connect. Using Yahoo telephone service I was
able to connect to him just fine. If this was a one time
thing I'd forget it on the spot. Not so, as this was a
recurring problem.
Yahoo voice from
my laptop was great.... Strange...
From PTC-08
Hunter
Newby and
Savageau at PTC-08.
You will have to send us a note to learn why they were wearing
hockey jerseys in Honolulu!
Monday, 7 January
Traffic on Any2 has dipped a bit. Here is
one of the anomalies of working at One Wilshire or Market Post
Tower. Since both buildings operate large meet-me-rooms, it is
very easy and fairly inexpensive to establish PNIs. While
reviewing several recent cross connect orders, it is apparent that
Any2 users will send traffic through the exchange, and after meeting
a certain threshold (which appears to be around 400Mbps) they will
order a direct fiber cross connect with the heavy traffic user.
This is of course most often used by networks
with a physical presence within One Wilshire Or Market Post Tower,
as again interconnect fees within the building are fairly low. On
the other hand, the overall number of networks connecting to Any2
continues to increase, although the actual amount of traffic from
heavy users changes based on their use of direct PNIs.
Peak traffic is now holding around 20Gbps, down
from 24Gbps about 2 weeks ago. There are 3 10GE networks
currently in the installation process, which should pump up traffic
quite a bit.
Notable notes from Internet
history:
In January 1969 ARPA
awarded a contract to
BBN
to build the first interface message processor (IMP) (to become
routers in a stupid sub-network). "BBN designed the IMP to
accommodate no more than 64 computers and only one network."
Sen. Ed Kennedy sent
BBN a telegram informing BBN that they had won the contract and said
that they were "to be congratulated on winning the contract for the
interfaith message processor." So reports have him
congratulating BBN on its ecumenical efforts.
[Nerds2.0
p 80] [How
the Web was Bor n
p 27]
One Wilshire in the background
of a YouTube music video (Finger 11 - Paralyzer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYGCT4AQIR0
Wednesday, 2 January 2008!
Welcome to 2008! Interesting discussion on
the NANOG mailing list regarding the status of IPv4 address
availability. Probably a good year for all of us to start
considering the role IPv6 may play in our future. Here is the
intro and a
link to the full article:
2007 IPv4 Address Use Report
In 2007, the number of available IPv4
addresses went down from 1300.65 million to 1122.85 million, a
difference of 177.8 million addresses.
The number of usable addresses is 3706.65
million, so on January 1,
2007 we were at 64.9% utilization and a year
later we're at 69.7%.
These figures are derived from the records
published on the FTP servers of the five Regional Internet
Registries (RIRs): AfriNIC, which gives out address space in Africa,
APNIC (Asia-Pacific region), ARIN (North America), LACNIC (Latin
American and the Caribbean) and the RIPE NCC (Europe, the former
Soviet Union and the Middle East).
There are two other ways to interpret the
same data. The first is simply add up all the address space with a
date indicating that it was given out in 2007. That number is 186.93
million addresses.
Friday, 28 December - New Year Customer
and Technical Support
FLASH! CRG West will
soon add another facility to our portfolio. We closed this
morning on an existing data center located at 12100 Sunrise Valley
Drive in Reston, Virginia. We'll need to do a couple months of
construction to reinforce the power, cooling, and telecom
distribution infrastructure, and plan to have the facility open for
business at some point late 1Q08. We will also establish DWDM
connections between the 1275 K Street NW facility in Washington DC
and Reston site to virtualize each facility's meet-me-rooms.
CRG West is very excited about this new property and chance to
further support the Internet and telecom communities in Northern
Virginia. Formal news release and more information to follow.
CRG West is staffed 24x7 during the New Year
holiday period. If you experience any trouble with Any2 during
the period of 28 Dec till Jan 2, the best way to open a ticket is
through the online portal. If you do not have access to a
computer, you can always call our customer support line to page a
technician(+1-866-430-5020) and state whether you are located at One
Wilshire or Market Post Tower.
We'll work with the Fiber Internet Center to
establish a route server in each new Any2 city.
Please forward questions or comments to any2@crgwest.com.
The Any2 Blog is used to support the Any2
Introduction and background information available at
Introduction.
Please refer to the Any2 Top level menu for all official
documentation and policy information. For questions, or if you
would like anything mentioned or added to the Any2 blog, please
contact CRG West at
any2@crgwest.com .
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