Euro-IX Press Release
[printer friendly version]FIRST EUROPEAN FORUM FOR INTERNET EXCHANGE POINTS
26th of September 2002
The largest-ever gathering of Internet exchange points - the 'telephone exchanges' of the Internet - held in Barcelona (Spain) this week has increased international co-operation aimed at improving the efficiency and security of the Internet.
Around 50 delegates from 17 European exchange points met at the facilities of Catalan exchange point CATNIX (Catalunya Neutral Internet Exchange) for the first-ever forum of Euro-IX (the European Internet Exchange Association),whose membership currently totals 21 independent European Internet exchange points.
Operational issues discussed at the forum included the technology and procedures for defeating distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites and servers, network monitoring, developing technologies such as multicasting, and the support of the new Internet protocol IPv6, specifically at exchange points. One complete session was devoted to a discussion on designing the infrastructure of exchange points to ensure resiliency and security whilst also optimising efficiency.
Business issues considered at the meeting included the pricing of exchange point services and the impact of the financial problems which have hit several major Internet service providers (ISPs) in recent months.
The keynote speech was delivered by Paul Vixie, a founder of the Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX) in the USA, which was the first neutral commercial internet exchange and is still one of the largest. He told the meeting:
"For an ISP (internet service providers) to truly thrive, they must cooperate with other ISP's, and that means they need exchange points. For the world's exchange points to be maximally beneficial, we need associations like Euro-IX, and meetings like this one.
In North America, our exchange point operators don't have an association and we've never met to share knowledge as Euro-IX just did in Barcelona. I think these European operators have a cultural advantage as far as learning how to communicate and trade across cultural and even language boundaries."
Euro-IX chairman Christian Panigl said: "The forum aims to help us meet our mission of sharing best practice among European exchange points. It allows us to debate and share ideas and to draw upon the experience of members from across the continent."
Miquel Huguet of forum hosts CATNIX said: "We have been delighted to welcome so many colleagues here. We were honoured to be asked to host the first Euro-IX forum and hope we have set a standard which others will strive to meet in future years."
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Note to editors:
1. EURO-IX was established in May 2001 to co-ordinate technical standards across the continent, develop common procedures, and share and publish statistics and other information. It provides a portal website with a framework for standardised presentation of key information about individual and independent Internet exchange points.
The portal is an internal knowledge base and communication platform for all members of EURO-IX for the sharing and exchange of information and best practice relating to implementation, operation and administration of Internet exchange points.
Currently 21 exchange points across Europe are members of Euro-IX. Details are available at www.euro-ix.net.
2. Internet exchange points connect the networks of, primarily, ISPs and CDSPs (content delivery service providers) to permit efficient exchange of Internet traffic between them.
3. Most European exchange points are 'mutual' organisations, owned equally by all the organisations which connect their networks (known as 'peering') there.
For further information contact:
info@euro-ix.net
Phone +31 20 305 89 93
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