Internet Exchange Points Research Articles

Rethinking IXPs’ Architecture in the Age of SDN

Software-defined Internet eXchange points (SDXs) are a promising solution to the long-standing limitations and problems of interdomain routing. While the proposed SDX architectures have improved the scalability of the control plane, these solutions have ignored the underlying fabric upon which they should be deployed. In this paper, we present Umbrella , a software-defined interconnection fabric that complements and enhances those architectures. Umbrella is a switching fabric architecture and management approach that improves the overall robustness, limiting control plane dependence, and suitable for the topology of any existing Internet eXchange Point (IXP). We validate Umbrella through a real-world deployment on two production IXPs, TouSIX and NSPIXP-3, and demonstrate its use in practice, sharing our experience of the challenges faced.

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): Enhancing ICT connectivity in China-Central Asia Corridor

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to enhance connectivity and collaboration among 60 countries and beyond in Asia, Africa and Europe. Information and communications technology (ICT) is an indispensable component of the initiative, critical in providing fundamental communication channels for global financial transactions, trade exchanges and transport and energy connectivity, and socio cultural collaboration and scientific exchanges between people, organizations and countries along the BRI corridors. Previously constrained by infrastructure deficits in ICT, the Asia-Pacific region is accelerating its efforts to provide reliable and affordable broadband networks throughout the region, to contribute to successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).Within the BRI corridors, this study which has been undertaken as part of the research programme of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) on promoting regional economic cooperation and integration, focuses on the China-Central Asia Corridor (China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), giving attention to the sub-region’s specific challenges, namely limited international transit opportunities and an increase in bandwidth requirements that is expected to grow exponentially, as the fourth industrial evolution centered on automation and artificial intelligence gathers momentum. The sub-region is characterized as highly dependent on the ease and costs of connecting to neighboring countries for transit, as many countries in the sub-region are landlocked developing countries (LLDC). Because of the geographical features and other factors, the development potential of Central Asia and its integration into globalization, continues to be stymied by insufficient international bandwidth and high transit costs to access international links. Therefore, improved ICT connectivity in Central Asia through the BRI corridor could result in improved availability and affordability of broadband networks and services in the sub-region.For the purpose of this study, a gap analysis is the methodology that underpins the proposed topology for the China-Central Asia Corridor. The analysis included examining the current state of the optic infrastructure, such as existing and planned fiber-optic networks, existing Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) and international gateways. The study also identifies the key factors that determine the desired future state of infrastructure deployment for the BRI initiative. A topology that consists of connecting Almaty (Kazakhstan) and Urumqi (China), as core nodes, is proposed based on a partial mesh topology. Over and above this core finding, the study concludes that digital infrastructure connectivity has a tendency of lagging behind the rapid opportunities evolving, and the study therefore advocates for sub-regional and regional approaches, including the BRI and Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway (AP-IS) in further expanding regional broadband networks. A key recommendation of the study is co-deployment of broadband infrastructure along passive infrastructure, as an additional cost effective means of achieving fast and affordable broadband connectivity for all.

Optimizing Internet Transit Routing for Content Delivery Networks

Content delivery networks (CDNs) maintain multiple transit routes from content distribution servers to eyeball ISP networks which provide Internet connectivity to end users. Due to the dynamics of varying performance and pricing on transit routes, CDNs need to implement a transit route selection strategy to optimize performance and cost tradeoffs. In this paper, we formalize the transit routing problem using a multi-attribute objective function to simultaneously optimize end-to-end performance and cost. Our approach allows CDNs to navigate the cost and performance tradeoff in transit routing through a single control knob. We evaluate our approach using real-world measurements from CDN servers located at 19 geographically distributed Internet exchange points. Using our approach, CDNs can reduce transit costs on average by 57% without sacrificing performance.

Radiography of internet autonomous systems interconnection in Latin America and the Caribbean

Lots of studies about the Internet Autonomous System (AS) level topology have been carried out during the last twenty years, most of them analyzing this topology on a world-wide scale, a lot of them based on routing information from the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). However, studies focusing on a specific region and making comparisons between regions are not that popular and in fact, most world-wide studies are not valid in some particular regions. This work is targeting this particular problem of the regional or country topology analysis by enhancing regular AS-level graphs where to apply different connectivity metrics. The focus is set on Latin America and the Caribbean (the LAC region) which exhibits appropriate conditions for this type of analysis and where we show that a basic metric comparison may not be good enough so as to realize that there is a connectivity problem in the region. After concluding that the situation in the LAC region in terms of interconnection is even worse than expected, we perform some country-level studies finding correlations between graph characteristics and some socioeconomic indicators. We then use these correlations to identify countries in which it would be worth pushing for the deployment of an Internet Exchange Point (IXP), as simulating the creation of an IXP there has a great impact on the interconnection level and on the robustness of the regional Internet.

Interplay of ICP and IXP over the Internet with power-law features

The Internet is the largest artificial network consisting of billions of IP devices, managed by tens of thousands of autonomous systems (ASes). Due to its importance, the Internet has received much attention and its topological features, mainly in AS-level, have been widely explored from the complex network perspective. However, most of the previous studies assume a homogeneous model in which nodes are indistinguishable in nature. It may be good for a general study of topological structure, but unfortunately it fails to reflect the functionality. The Internet ecology is in fact heterogeneous and highly complex. It consists of various elements such as Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), Internet Content Providers (ICPs), and normal Autonomous System (ASes), realizing different roles in the Internet. In this paper, we propose level-structured network models for investigating how ICP performs under the AS-topology with power-law features and how IXP enhances its performance from a complex network perspective. Based on real data, our results reveal that the power-law nature of the Internet facilitates content delivery not only in efficiency but also in path redundancy. Moreover, the proposed multi-level framework is able to clearly illustrate the significant benefits gained by ICP from IXP peerings.

Africa Telecommunications Infrastructure in 2018: Overview and Policy Recommendations

The internet is the single most effective mechanism in human history for promoting global economic prosperity and lifting the world’s population out of poverty. Many of the next billion internet users will come from Africa. While the coverage and speed of mobile services in Africa has improved dramatically in recent years, significant barriers still exist in improving internet coverage across the continent. This paper provides an overview and policy recommendations for the three main areas of Africa's Telecommunications Infrastructure: undersea cable, terrestrial broadband networks, and mobile services. The following are some general policy recommendations for African countries to improve their national telecommunications infrastructure: •All countries should adopt basic legislation ensuring free and unrestricted transfer of commercial data across national boundaries. •Nations should enter into regional broadband agreements, utilizing nearby international cables to decrease access costs for consumers. Often, accessing submarine cable can completely change the growth trajectory of the ICT market in a country. •Every country should construct at least one Internet Exchange Point (IXP) to distribute incoming international traffic. IXP’s decrease international routing fees and can substantially lower local internet prices. •Every regulator or communications ministry on the continent should begin the process of liberalizing the mobile (if it has not been privatized already) and fixed-line sectors. •The future of communications in Africa is mobile. Every country should heavily invest in constructing and expanding national 4G networks while planning for 5G. •While mobile has provided the majority of growth for telecoms, countries cannot neglect their national fixed-line infrastructure as years of decay have limited access rates and stunted overall sector growth. •Countries should adopt legislation that standardizes local access services that connect individual neighborhoods and homes into the national backbone. Currently, many urban households cannot take advantage of increased investment in the national backbone due to predatory pricing schemes and a lack of quality assurance standards. •In most African cities, copper and fiberoptic internet cables are tangled with electrical lines on street lamps, limiting expansion to other areas and making cable repair expensive. Local and national governments must better enforce cable installation regulations to remove the inefficiency. •Internet access in rural areas across Africa remains almost nonexistent. In maturing markets such as Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, governments should create tax incentives for the large telecoms to extend access to rural villages. •Lastly, each nation should promote ICT skill training and provide subsidized education for communications professions.

Internet Node as a Network of Relationships: Sociotechnical Aspects of an Internet Exchange Point

Internet Node as a Network of Relationships: Sociotechnical Aspects of an Internet Exchange Point

ENDEAVOUR: A Scalable SDN Architecture For Real-World IXPs

Innovation in interdomain routing has remained stagnant for over a decade. Recently, Internet eXchange Points (IXPs) have emerged as economically-advantageous interconnection points for reducing path latencies and exchanging ever increasing traffic volumes among, possibly, hundreds of networks. Given their far-reaching implications on interdomain routing, IXPs are the ideal place to foster network innovation and extend the benefits of software defined networking (SDN) to the interdomain level. In this paper, we present, evaluate, and demonstrate ENDEAVOUR, an SDN platform for IXPs. ENDEAVOUR can be deployed on a multi-hop IXP fabric, supports a large number of use cases, and is highly scalable, while avoiding broadcast storms. Our evaluation with real data from one of the largest IXPs, demonstrates the benefits and scalability of our solution: ENDEAVOUR requires around 70% fewer rules than alternative SDN solutions thanks to our rule partitioning mechanism. In addition, by providing an open source solution, we invite everyone from the community to experiment (and improve) our implementation as well as adapt it to new use cases.

Tomografía de la red en un IXP: Primer análisis del PIT Bolivia

Los Puntos de Intercambios de Tráfico (PIT) han sido los principales autores del mayor cambio del ecosistema de Internet en los últimos 15 años. A pesar de la popularidad de los PITs, gran cantidad de países demoraron en incorporar esta infraestructura a sus redes. En 2013, Bolivia impulsó la creación del PIT nacional, lo que motivó nuestro interés de estudiar por primera vez un PIT en la región, en un país que aún no contará con esta infraestructura. Sin embargo, ante la ausencia de sondas de medición de Internet en Bolivia debidos desarrollar una plataforma (PladMeD) para observar la influencia del PIT. En este artículo se estudió durante seis meses el efecto del PIT en la red nacional, enfocándose en las modificaciones en la interconexión y la calidad de servicio en la red nacional.

The Geopolitical Economy of the Global Internet Infrastructure

AbstractAccording to many observers, economic globalization and the liberalization of telecoms/internet policy have remade the world in the image of the United States. The dominant roles of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have also led to charges of US internet imperialism. This article, however, argues that while these internet giants dominate some of the most popular internet services, the ownership and control of core elements of the internet infrastructure—submarine cables, internet exchange points, autonomous system numbers, datacenters, and so on—are tilting increasingly toward the EU and BRICS (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries and the rest of the world, complicating views of hegemonic US control of the internet and what Susan Strange calls the knowledge structure.

The Geopolitical Economy of the Global Internet Infrastructure

AbstractAccording to many observers, economic globalization and the liberalization of telecoms/internet policy have remade the world in the image of the United States. The dominant roles of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have also led to charges of US internet imperialism. This article, however, argues that while these internet giants dominate some of the most popular internet services, the ownership and control of core elements of the internet infrastructure—submarine cables, internet exchange points, autonomous system numbers, datacenters, and so on—are tilting increasingly toward the EU and BRICS (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries and the rest of the world, complicating views of hegemonic US control of the internet and what Susan Strange calls the knowledge structure.

A measurement study of internet exchange points (IXPs): history and future prediction

Internet exchange points (IXPs) emerged to remedy the deficiency of peering connections among autonomous systems (ASes). IXPs play an important role in reducing the cost of transit connections over the Internet. This work attempts to study the popularity of IXPs over the Internet. This work consists of two main parts. The first part is a measurement study of multihistorical snapshots of IXPs. These historical data have been harvested for different European IXPs with emphasis on Amsterdam (AMS-IX) IXP. In the second part, two nonlinear autoregressive exogenous (NARX) back-propagation neural network models (BPNN) have been implemented to predict the following: the future traffic volume that the AMS-IX IXP will transit and the number of participant networks that will use the AMX-IX IXP services. We utilized AMX-IX IXP collected data to implement these models. Our results show that ASes have understood the important roles that IXPs play on the Internet. Moreover, the traffic size that is carried by the IXPs is rapidly growing. Finally, our implemented NARX BPNN models show a considerable degree of fidelity, in which we obtained more than 99% in regression value with negligible error.

SDN Orchestration for Next Generation Inter-Networking: A Multipath Forwarding Approach

Increasing trend of peering at Internet exchange points (IXPs) provides a topological and network management advantage to the Internet service providers (ISPs) that is otherwise not possible through individual peering arrangements with their neighboring domains. ISPs keep analyzing potential advantages to peer at geographically diversified IXPs. Increasing degree of multihoming in ISPs requires extensive coordination among ISPs in different roles (access and transit), for mutual benefit. We propose a novel approach to build a conducive inter-networking ambiance for future data centric applications. Our approach exploits edge multiplicity of transit ISPs present across different IXPs to leverage a cross layer coordination between network stack at access ISP subscribers and the network infrastructure. Software defined networking provides a useful apparatus to control IXP fabric and also empowers our multipath forwarding strategy for an optimal network resource utilization in the inter-domain configuration. Contributions of this paper include the derivation of abstracted overlay graph from an IXP centric inter-domain connectivity model. This graph is used to provide multipath forwarding for increased reliability and throughput over abstracted graph. Adaptive cross layer coordination increases the efficiency of the proposed framework and provides an online mechanism of forwarding the traffic across the domains. We have observed as high as 54% increase in throughput using proposed scheme as compared with single path routing and forwarding strategy currently employed at the Internet backbone.

Inter-domain networking innovation on steroids: empowering ixps with SDN capabilities

While innovation in inter-domain routing has remained stagnant for over a decade, Internet exchange points (IXPs) are consolidating their role as economically advantageous interconnection points for reducing path latencies and exchanging ever increasing amounts of traffic. As such, IXPs appear as a natural place to foster network innovation and assess the benefits of SDN, a recent technological trend that has already boosted innovation within data center networks. In this article, we give a comprehensive overview of use cases for SDN at IXPs, which leverage the superior vantage point of an IXP to introduce advanced features like load balancing and DDoS mitigation. We discuss the benefits of SDN solutions by analyzing real-world data from one of the largest IXPs. We also leverage insights into IXP operations to shape benefits not only for members but also for operators.

Assessing Resilience of Inter-Domain Routing System under Regional Failures

Inter-domain routing is the most critical function of the Internet. The routing system is a logical network relying on the physical infrastructure with geographical characteristics. Nature disasters or disruptive accidents such as earthquakes, cable cuts and power outages could cause regional failures which fail down geographically co-located network nodes and links, therefore, affect the resilience of inter-domain routing system. This paper presents a model for regional failures in inter-domain routing system called REFER for the first time. Based on REFER, the resilience of the inter-domain routing system could be evaluated on a finer level of the Internet, considering different routing policies of intra-domain and inter-domain routing systems. Under this model, we perform simulations on an empirical topology of the Internet with geographical characteristics to simulate a regional failure locating at a city with important IXP (Internet eXchange Point). Results indicate that the Internet is robust under a city-level regional failure. The reachability is almost the same after the failure, and the reroutings occur at the edge of the Internet, hardly affecting the core of inter-domain routing system.

Unraveling the impacts of IXP in internet ecosystem using bi-layered network

The Internet is a huge complex network, consisting of tens thousands of Autonomous Systems (ASes). Being a logical fabric of the Internet, the AS-level topology serves as a manageable and useful vehicle for the study of Internet characteristics. However, Internet exchange points (IXPs) have been ignored in previous studies despite of being one of the primary mechanisms for AS interconnections and playing an important role for improving data traffic. In this paper, a novel bi-layered network model is proposed to present an IXP–AS topology. The bi-layered network is built based on the actual architecture, from which a comprehensive study of current AS ecosystem and the impacts of IXP can be made. As revealed by network metrics applied onto the bi-layered network, IXP is always of higher centrality as compared with ASes, well matching its role. By comparing the results in 2009 and 2014, rapid growth in IXP number, membership and impacts are noticed. There are over 98% source–destination pairs routes (with shortest path routing protocol) affected by IXP in 2014. Our results also show that, being an IXP member is more favorable than being a non-member, hence it attracts many ASes, especially those with low centrality, in recent years.

A Comparative Look into Public IXP Datasets

Internet eXchange Points (IXPs) are core components of the Internet infrastructure where Internet Service Providers (ISPs) meet and exchange traffic. During the last few years, the number and size of IXPs have increased rapidly, driving the flattening and shortening of Internet paths. However, understanding the present status of the IXP ecosystem and its potential role in shaping the future Internet requires rigorous data about IXPs, their presence, status, participants, etc. In this work, we do the first cross-comparison of three well-known publicly available IXP databases, namely of PeeringDB, Euro-IX, and PCH. A key challenge we address is linking IXP identifiers across databases maintained by different organizations. We find different AS-centric versus IXP-centric views provided by the databases as a result of their data collection approaches. In addition, we highlight differences and similarities w.r.t. IXP participants, geographical coverage, and co-location facilities. As a side-product of our linkage heuristics, we make publicly available the union of the three databases, which includes 40.2% more IXPs and 66.3% more IXP participants than the commonly-used PeeringDB. We also publish our analysis code to foster reproducibility of our experiments and shed preliminary insights into the accuracy of the union dataset.

Datix

The ever-increasing Internet traffic poses challenges to network operators and administrators that have to analyze large network datasets in a timely manner to make decisions regarding network routing, dimensioning, accountability and security. Network datasets collected at large networks such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) can be in the order of Terabytes per hour. Unfortunately, most of the current network analysis approaches are ad-hoc and centralized, and thus not scalable. In this paper, we present Datix, a fully decentralized, open-source analytics system for network traffic data that relies on smart partitioning storage schemes to support fast join algorithms and efficient execution of filtering queries. We outline the architecture and design of Datix and we present the evaluation of Datix using real traces from an operational IXP. Datix is a system that deals with an important problem in the intersection of data management and network monitoring while utilizing state-of-the-art distributed processing engines. In brief, Datix manages to efficiently answer queries within minutes compared to more than 24 hours processing when executing existing Python based code in single node setups. Datix also achieves nearly 70% speedup compared to baseline query implementations of popular big data analytics engines such as Hive and Shark.

20,000 In League Under the Sea: Anonymous Communication, Trust, MLATs, and Undersea Cables

Abstract Motivated by the effectiveness of correlation attacks against Tor, the censorship arms race, and observations of malicious relays in Tor, we propose that Tor users capture their trust in network elements using probability distributions over the sets of elements observed by network adversaries. We present a modular system that allows users to efficiently and conveniently create such distributions and use them to improve their security. To illustrate this system, we present two novel types of adversaries. First, we study a powerful, pervasive adversary that can compromise an unknown number of Autonomous System organizations, Internet Exchange Point organizations, and Tor relay families. Second, we initiate the study of how an adversary might use Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) to enact surveillance. As part of this, we identify submarine cables as a potential subject of trust and incorporate data about these into our MLAT analysis by using them as a proxy for adversary power. Finally, we present preliminary experimental results that show the potential for our trust framework to be used by Tor clients and services to improve security.

The Dictatorss Digital Dilemma: When Do States Disconnect Their Digital Networks?

SUMMARY hen do governments decide to interfere with the Internet, and why? While many observers celebrate the creative use of digital media by activists and civil society leaders, there are a significant number of incidents involving government-led Internet shutdowns. Governments have offered a range of reasons for interfering with digital networks, employed many tactics, and experienced both costs and benefits in doing so. When and why do states disconnect their digital networks is a principle question we examine in this paper. To answer this question, we built an event history database of incidents in which a regime went beyond mere surveillance of particular websites or users, and actually disconnected Internet exchange points or blocked significant amounts of certain kinds of traffic. All in all, there were 606 unique incidents involving 99 countries since 1995: 39 percent of the incidents occurred in democracies, 6 percent occurred in emerging democracies, 52 percent occurred in authoritarian regimes, and 3 percent occurred in fragile states. Then we developed three standardized typologies for the kinds of incidents being reported. First, we developed a category that iteratively helped define the case, and a typology of actions that states take against social media. Second, we developed a category for why they took that action, sometimes relying on third-party reports if the state simply denied any interference. Finally, we developed a category for the impact of the interference.