Talk:Internet exchange point

Middle East IXPs

Please read the following notes, before editing the Middle East section again:

- There was briefly a government-initiated IXP in Cairo, called the CR-IX, in 2002. To the best of my knowlege, it was wholly defunct by 2004. It was succeeded by a much quieter private-sector IXP, which currently has three participants, on 81.21.96.0/25.

- There is an IXP planned for Bahrain, called Gulf-IX, in the still-under-construction GatewayGulf datacenter. With luck, it will be up sometime in mid-2007. There is no other IXP in Bahrain. The "Bahrain Internet Exchange" is a small government-owned transit provider.

- EMIX, the Emirates Internet Exchange, likewise, is a transit provider, not an IXP. They'll tell you so themselves.

There's also the small IXP in Tel Aviv, which hasn't changed much in a long time. So: please only edit this section again if you have some good news for us. Bill Woodcock 22:17, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Chinese IXPs

My understanding was that the three IXPs in China were state-controlled and operated in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. See here.140.247.147.88 01:07, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

New York

What about that huge exchange point in New York City? --Abdull 16:31, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

afaik the NYIIIX (New York Internet Exchange) is rather a small one. Have a look at the german page, there you see the traffic of Internet Exchange Points. -- Alvo 10:19, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

The NYIIX is quite large, for a U.S. exchange... But more to the point, they're in 111 8th, along with PAIX and Equinix, and the crossconnects in NYCConnect, and the new NYCJ 10gbe exchange. New York is slowly taking the place of D.C. as the east coast regional exchange. --Bill

Jecowa is suggesting merging National_Inter_Connection_Exchange and Indonesia_Open_Internet_Exchange_Point into the hierarchy of this page. I'd support that, with the caveat that it would be nice if someone could provide independent verification of the existence of either of these IXPs. Looking glass? --Bill

Wrong content in wrong page

I think we should have an article that explains what an exchange point is. Plain and simple. All other internet exchange points and their detailed infomation should be in different articles. Ken

Also, there are a several good listings of IXPs in the Internet: Packet Clearing House, Open Directory Project, Exchange Point Repository, BGP Forum, EuroGIX. Probably we dont need to maintain a list of IXPs in a wikipedia. In the german wikipedia, there have been artifcles about IXPs removed because they have been considered as not relevant in a encyclopedia. Regards -- Alvo 18:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm of mixed minds about this... I run Packet Clearing House, and we've maintained the large directory of IXPs since about 1994 (well, it was only a couple, then, but it was equally complete), and put quite a bit of staff time into it. At one level, it's redundant for us to also be trying to copy updates out to Wikipedia. On the other hand, once or twice there have been people who've thought to post an update of some sort to Wikipedia before we've discovered it otherwise. In general, though, I agree that differentiating definitions and directories is a good thing. Bill Woodcock 20:42, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Bulgaria

I believe the two exchange points mentioned are defunct. Peering is currently implemented via private gigabit ISP to ISP connections using a MAN.

Neutral Access Point

I understand that the term NAP is still used in Europe, eg http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Exchange_Point and Google shows many hits. I think NAP should be included under IXP. Regards John John a s 10:14, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, I think there was already a discussion about that in: Talk:Network_access_point I think if there are no vote against it, I can try to merge the two articles and redirect NAP to IXP. Any comments? --Never stop exploring (talk) 09:28, 18 April 2015 (UTC) PS: Let me say hi to User:Bwoodcock :)

I don't hear _Neutral_ Access Point used much at all, honestly. When people say "NAP," they mean "Network Access Point," in the historical or Latin-American senses, generally. And I assume this is Marco? Anyway, yes, I'd support a merge. Bill Woodcock (talk) 01:30, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Pakistan

I've removed PIE from the list of IXPs. It does not appear to be an IX, just a telco-owned transit provider network. See e.g. [1]. Compare Bahrain Internet Exchange, EMIX, and so forth. Will-h 15:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Possible merge with the NAP article

On 6 June 2012 user Ál added a merge template suggesting that the NAP and IXP articles be merged. Other than the merge templates, I don't see any further discussion about or rational for the merge.

For myself, I don't think a merge is a good idea. NAPs are largely historical now, while IXPs are current. It seems like adding historical information about NAPs to the IXP article would be just adding unnecessary clutter. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 14:52, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I removed the merge template from the article. If other editors still feel that a marge is a good idea, we can continue the discussion at Talk:Network access point#Possible merge with IXP article. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 18:25, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

It's still a good idea. I'm giving it a try as a new "History" section here. If there's general agreement on both sides, then we'd turn "Network Access Point" and "NAP" into redirects to the IXP article, after deleting the old Network Access Point article. NAPs are entirely deprecated, and are exclusively a historical subset of IXPs, so it seems appropriate, and if they're not a single article, there will be people who will find their way to the NAP article and not follow to the IXP article, and remain confused re context and scope. Thus the rationale for the merge. Bill Woodcock (talk) 13:13, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Inapplicable / misleading diagram

Is anyone really wedded to the diagram on the bottom right, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_Connectivity_Distribution_%26_Core.svg ? It's misleading in the sense that it features "tier" terminology heavily, as though that meant something specific or useful, and it implies that "tier 1" and "tier 3" ISPs don't peer at IXPs. I'm pretty sure this does more harm than good. Bill Woodcock (talk) 22:09, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm not wedded to this particular diagram or its terminology. I do think that some sort of diagram is useful in this article. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 23:56, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Jeff Ogden (W163), this sort of diagram is *not* useful in this article. Wonder if there is any good source or a better diagram from someone else, did you had something in mind Bill Woodcock? --Never stop exploring (talk) 10:35, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Just replaced the offending diagram. If anyone disagrees, please pipe up, or revert, or whatever. Thanks. Bill Woodcock (talk) 02:03, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Misleading first sentence

The first sentence of this article reads "Internet exchange points are the locations where Internet bandwidth is produced, analogous to factories for physical goods". In my opinion this is an actively misleading description, and I was alerted to it by someone who is learning about internet technology and was quite confused by it.

Bandwidth is not "produced" in any meaningful technical sense. Internet bandwidth is a property of connectivity; it is not produced anywhere. If you visit the website of any IXP, you will not anywhere see any mention of them "producing" bandwidth. The Internet Exchange Federation's definition of an IXP does not mention this either.

The cited paper is making an economic analogy with bandwidth as a physical good, and while it may be useful for the purposes of this paper (which appears to be aimed at policymakers), I do not believe it belongs in an encyclopaedic description of what an IXP is. I will also note that this sentence appears to have been added by one of the authors of the paper it cites.

I would recommend that this sentence is removed. The following sentence, while not perfect, is a much more accurate description of what an IXP is. I attempted to make this change but it was reverted.

- Russ (talk) 17:25, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, this is a really confusing definition. Bandwidth isn't "produced", merely traffic exchanged. A more useful definition might be the IX-F definition of an IXP at http://www.ix-f.net/ixp-definition.html - which is basically what Russ wrote. Perhaps it would be better to cite this definition in the article? Will-h (talk) 17:32, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I absolutely disagree. You're suggesting that we remove the context and leave only a bare description. The Wikipedia article for "money" doesn't say that it's rectangular pieces of paper. The Wikipedia article for "cars" doesn't say that they're metal boxes. If Wikipedia were written for raccoons or something, those descriptions might be sufficient, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, written for humans. More than half of all humans consume Internet bandwidth. In the context of humans, the interesting thing about IXPs is that they're where the bandwidth comes from, not that they're rooms with cables going in and out. Keep the first sentence as-is. It's concise and accurate. BurritoTunnelMaintenance (talk) 13:08, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Please see Bandwidth_(computing): "maximum rate of data transfer across a given path" -- this is not something which can be "consumed", any more than turning on the tap in your house to have a drink consumes water pipe. Users receive and consume internet traffic in the form of packets. Moreover these are *not* generated in an IXP; typically these are generated in a Content_delivery_network which usually perform interconnection using IXPs, as well as interconnecting via other methods. Characterising IXPs as a "source of traffic" in this way is entirely misleading. Will-h (talk) 13:23, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

The first sentence is as consice and accurate as "Traffic is produced by intersections". While I agree that we should write a first sentence in a way that it's easily understandable, we should stick with what's correct. 1183519e (talk) 13:49, 6 October 2021 (UTC)