One of my past employers had a crazy simple networking philosophy. It killed me. He once had his provider shut the port facing his core switch down, due to STP BPDUs being transmitted. To remedy this, instead of disabling the feature on the switch, he replaced it with an unmanaged switch that doesnt speak STP.
I remember in the 2000s a large-ish Telco network in the US was running ospf on an IX. A few of us on IRC did the what if? And one of us brought up the adjacency and it worked.
Same network also had all their network links in MRTG public too with no auth - if you only knew the hostname/URL you could see it all (which their staff would sometimes drop in Noc communication when linking a graph and you attempted to go there to poke around).
I’m still a bit unclear about how an IX is situated relative to the internet and to end users. Per the article, it’s not meant to have desktops or print queues plugged into it, but it’s also a LAN. What sort of computer is meant to participate in an IX?
This is why IX like Torix lock down switch ports to a single MAC address and limited protocols (ARP, IPv4, IPv6). It's a bit of a pain when first setting up peering, but it reduces the exposure for all those connected to the IX. The reliability track record clearly demonstrates how worthwhile the strategy is.
The IX is like a gravitational hub at the center of a galactic cluster. It doesn’t create stars (data) itself, but it bends spacetime (network topology) in such a way that galaxies (ISPs) can orbit and interact efficiently without needing to sling data across the intergalactic void (expensive transit).
- ISPs as Stars/Planets:
Each ISP is like a stellar system with its own mass (bandwidth capacity, user base). They orbit into the IX “gravitational well” by sending out fiber-optic “space-time bridges” (links) to dock into the exchange.
- Fiber Links as Wormholes:
The optical fibers into the IX are essentially wormholes: direct, high-speed tunnels across spacetime that collapse distance. Instead of traveling light-years through transit (Tier-1 providers), local traffic jumps instantly between ISPs through the IX’s wormhole endpoints.
- Switch Fabric as the Interstellar Medium:
The IX switching fabric is like a plasma medium in the galactic core — it doesn’t decide where stars go, it just provides the environment where matter (packets) can move around without collision. It’s neutral, like the intergalactic medium, just enabling the exchange.
- BGP as Gravity’s Equation:
Just like Einstein’s field equations determine how mass curves spacetime, BGP policies determine how traffic paths curve through the IX. Each ISP “publishes its mass” (advertises prefixes), and neighboring ISPs decide how to route packets based on that gravitational influence.
- Local vs. Transit:
Without an IX, traffic between two galaxies (ISPs) might have to pass through a supercluster-scale filament (Tier-1 backbone). With an IX, they just exchange starlight (packets) directly within the cluster, conserving energy and reducing latency — much like galaxies trading radiation locally instead of sending it across megaparsecs.
So in astrophysics terms: an IX is a galactic core enabling local wormhole trade routes, where BGP is the gravity law and fibers are Einstein-Rosen bridges connecting stellar systems (ISPs) into a dynamic, orbiting cluster.
- Imagine a big hangout spot in the middle of town where all the school buses from different schools meet.
- Each bus is an Internet company (ISP), carrying kids (data) who need to visit kids from other schools.
- Without the hangout spot, the buses would have to drive all the way across the city through downtown traffic (expensive, slow routes through bigger Internet companies).
- But at the hangout spot (the IX), the buses can just pull up next to each other and drop kids off directly -- quick, cheap, and easy.
- The IX itself doesn’t tell kids where to go, it’s just the place with lots of parking spots and connections.
- The ISPs (buses) still decide who gets on and off by making agreements with each other. That’s like them saying, “Okay, I’ll let your kids ride with me if you let mine ride with you.”
So, an IX is basically a meeting place where Internet companies connect their networks directly, instead of going the long way around through someone else.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 37.5 ms ] threadSame network also had all their network links in MRTG public too with no auth - if you only knew the hostname/URL you could see it all (which their staff would sometimes drop in Noc communication when linking a graph and you attempted to go there to poke around).
- The IX as a Galactic Core:
The IX is like a gravitational hub at the center of a galactic cluster. It doesn’t create stars (data) itself, but it bends spacetime (network topology) in such a way that galaxies (ISPs) can orbit and interact efficiently without needing to sling data across the intergalactic void (expensive transit).
- ISPs as Stars/Planets: Each ISP is like a stellar system with its own mass (bandwidth capacity, user base). They orbit into the IX “gravitational well” by sending out fiber-optic “space-time bridges” (links) to dock into the exchange.
- Fiber Links as Wormholes: The optical fibers into the IX are essentially wormholes: direct, high-speed tunnels across spacetime that collapse distance. Instead of traveling light-years through transit (Tier-1 providers), local traffic jumps instantly between ISPs through the IX’s wormhole endpoints.
- Switch Fabric as the Interstellar Medium: The IX switching fabric is like a plasma medium in the galactic core — it doesn’t decide where stars go, it just provides the environment where matter (packets) can move around without collision. It’s neutral, like the intergalactic medium, just enabling the exchange.
- BGP as Gravity’s Equation: Just like Einstein’s field equations determine how mass curves spacetime, BGP policies determine how traffic paths curve through the IX. Each ISP “publishes its mass” (advertises prefixes), and neighboring ISPs decide how to route packets based on that gravitational influence.
- Local vs. Transit: Without an IX, traffic between two galaxies (ISPs) might have to pass through a supercluster-scale filament (Tier-1 backbone). With an IX, they just exchange starlight (packets) directly within the cluster, conserving energy and reducing latency — much like galaxies trading radiation locally instead of sending it across megaparsecs.
So in astrophysics terms: an IX is a galactic core enabling local wormhole trade routes, where BGP is the gravity law and fibers are Einstein-Rosen bridges connecting stellar systems (ISPs) into a dynamic, orbiting cluster.
- Imagine a big hangout spot in the middle of town where all the school buses from different schools meet.
- Each bus is an Internet company (ISP), carrying kids (data) who need to visit kids from other schools.
- Without the hangout spot, the buses would have to drive all the way across the city through downtown traffic (expensive, slow routes through bigger Internet companies).
- But at the hangout spot (the IX), the buses can just pull up next to each other and drop kids off directly -- quick, cheap, and easy.
- The IX itself doesn’t tell kids where to go, it’s just the place with lots of parking spots and connections.
- The ISPs (buses) still decide who gets on and off by making agreements with each other. That’s like them saying, “Okay, I’ll let your kids ride with me if you let mine ride with you.”
So, an IX is basically a meeting place where Internet companies connect their networks directly, instead of going the long way around through someone else.