This is a proposal to set up a virtual, free, IX in Singapore.

Thanks to SGNOG OC, we have use of the meeting room at Lunch time during SGNOG 10, Friday 22 Sep 2023, Raffles City. Please turn up and help us build this.

TLDR

Use case: Will offer free BGP peering. Registration required. Automated turn-on.

This grew out of Sanjeev's frustration that although these are common in Europe and (to a lower extent) in N America, there is nothing like this locally, with low latency.

There have been attempts by some of these (iFog/bgptunnel.com) to start a POP in SG, because latency to their POPs in Europe makes the tunnel useless, even as a learning method. It is a chicken and egg, till they have local members, they will not attract local members.

The principal proposers are:

Sanjeev Gupta
Soragan Ong

Please join us. Edit this document.

Pros:

Anyone with an AS who has connectivity via his ISP to SGIX can partipate to exchange traffic
No OTC, no MRC (there may be a $1 OTC, via PayNow, just to prove identity)
Useful as a learning tool
Self-provisioned tunnel. Our BGP speaker will listen passively, so if your IP changes, please reconnect
You do not need a $1000 pm local loop, plus an OTC, to start exchanging traffic.

Cons:

No transit (although another participant may offer)
Total traffic is limited to our SGIX connection (1G to start)
If your ISP is not on the SGIX LAN, no dice. You can't get to us.
No SLA

If interest grows, a transit provider may connect and offer people services, we are ambivalent. VQ is on SGIX, as is SPTel, to mention two that are quite "friendly".

Again, no SLA.

Here is a badly drawn diagram. The squiggly lines are tunnels built over the Internet, the straight lines on the left are the tunnels themselves.

How we lose members

One of three things can happen, once you are a user.

You peer with other free members. You learn BGP, RPKI, etc. No traffic goes to SGIX.
You use the peering that BGP.SG has with SGIX to talk to a transit provider. You can get easy access via SPTel or VQ or Tata, for example. This increases value to everyone of SGIX. Your cost remain zero, but you only share our link to SGIX for transit (1G to start).
You see the advantages, and graduate out of our IX, get a cross connect, and become an SGIX member directly. We are sorry to lose you, but SGIX and the world gets a new participant

What we need

Hardware

Available Hardware:
- starting with CCR1009-8G-1S, higher spec hardware available if more participants
... in a DC with SGIX cross-connect
A server which acts a management interface for the tunnels, etc (need not be onsite)
two RS, one with filter and restricted access, one without filter and published read-only access for members

Software

Some coding for the web interface and status pages

People

At least 3 people, 4 or 5 preferred, to keep an eye on stuff, answer questions, etc
At least 2 of these should have access to the DC

Money

Hardware: lifetime loan and backup from Soragan
Server - Sanjeev will provide
Coding - Sanjeev will provide (Soragan to help integrate)
Hosting in DC. 1U
Cross-connect to SGIX - Sanjeev can cover monthly costs
SGIX port - Ask SGIX? Else Sanjeev

Numbers

An ASN - Sanjeev (or we can use private)
Tunnel endpoint IP - Sanjeev
LAN/Tunnel IPs - We can use RFC6598 Shared Space 100.64.0.0/10 ?

Architecture options

- hosted in an office/home/wherever with link to at least SGIX

- hosted in DC (higher monthly operational cost due to colo and related service) but better reachability

Summary

Basically, we can discuss costs and sponsorships later, along with the most important question: What is our domain name?

What I need to understand now is, would you use this?