The Role of IXP (Internet Exchange Points) in Internet governance – WS 07 2014

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13 June 2014 | 11:30-13:00
Programme overview 2014

Session subject

Internet Exchange Points are part of the core infrastructure of the Internet as well as a relevant stakeholder in Internet Governance.

Session description

The Internet has become increasingly the key infrastructure and platform for social, political and economic activities. This implies strong dependency on the basic infrastructure and on the services and applications that use the Internet. Internet Exchange Points are part of the core infrastructure of the Internet as well as a relevant stakeholder in Internet Governance.

The Workshops intends to identify the core infrastructure of the Internet, the relevant stakeholders based on the division of roles and responsibilities and the mutual dependencies. Subsequently we will assess and evaluate the role of IXPs in Internet Governance. Consequently a major focus will be put on how IXPs make a contribution to safeguard and ensure an open, divers, secure, and effective infrastructure that maintains and enhances the capability of the Internet as a key driver for innovation and economic growth.

eco has been the Association of the German Internet Industry for more than 15 years, representing member's interest on political platforms worldwide. Together with over 600 member enterprises worldwide, eco is shaping the Internet: We develop markets, promote technologies and form frameworks. www.eco.de

People

  • Focal point: Henning Lesch, eco – the Association of the German Internet Industry
  • Live moderator: Henning Lesch
  • Remote participation moderator: Anya Orlova
  • Digital facilitator: Lorena
  • Panelists/speakers: (suggested list of panelist/speakers) tbc
  • Participants:
  • Lee Hibbard, CoE (tbc)
  • Malcolm Hutty, LINX (tbc)
  • Martin J. Levy, CloudFlare, Inc.
  • Arnold Nipper, Founder / CTO DE-CIX
  • tbc, Digitale Gesellschaft e.V.

Format of this working group at EuroDIG

Explanatory note: Considering the topic and focus of the Workshop a multi-stakeholder-approach will be extremely difficult but we will try. At least the Workshop will cover the aspects and incorporate a multitude of stakeholders.

Protocol. Discussions

Further reading

Messages

Reporter: Henning Lesch, Association of the German Internet Industry (eco)

  1. The Internet is a critical infrastructure. So it is essential to maintain stability, reliability, security.
  2. The Internet is a network of networks. By design the Internet is one global and decentralized network.
  3. Internet Exchange Points are an active part of the Internet Community and play an important role in Internet Governance. They provide a solid and reliable infrastructure backing up the worldwide Internet, are a neutral marketplace for interconnection open for anybody, enhance the coverage of broadband services, enhance competition and diversity
  4. Access to the Internet is an important means to exercise human rights and fundamental rights. The Recommendations of the Council of Europe especially the “Guidelines for Internet Service Providers”(H/Inf (2008)9) and the “Human Rights Guidelines for Internet users” (Recommendation CM/Rec(2014)6) should be promoted and applied by all relevant stakeholders. It´s essential to get broad distribution and public awareness.

Video Record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88W8HpPPGQI

Transcript

Provided by: Caption First, Inc., P.O. Box 3066, Monument, CO 80132, Phone: +001-719-481-9835, www.captionfirst.com


This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.


>> HENNING LESCH: Hello, everybody.

Yeah, welcome to our workshop to Role of Internet Exchange Points in Internet Governance, and thanks for your interest in participating in this workshop.

Rather than going to make a long speech or introduction, and due to the given time frame and I think we have a lot of topics to discuss, let’s start quickly. Because this is a workshop, I would be very, very happy if all participants who would like to engage, ask questions, especially from the remote side, which are warmly welcome, as well.

Okay. Let’s start. I would suggest we make a quick introduction to the panelists. My name is Henning Lesch, I moderate this workshop. I’m working for eco, that’s the German Internet Industry Association. On my right side is – that’s Arnold Nipper, if you introduce yourself, that would be fine.

>> ARNOLD NIPPER: Yeah. So I’m Arnold Nipper, I’m from DE-CIX, serving DE-CIX as the CTO/COO. I’m in the Internet business since more than 25 years now, and with DE-CIX almost 20 years as well. I know of nothing about the Internet. Actually, telling about Internet exchange marketing may confirm it. Internet exchange actually knows nothing about Internet; we know something about Ethernet in most cases.

>> SAM FRANCES: I’m Sam Frances, from the London Internet Exchange, one of the world’s largest – where pocket richly owned by government (inaudible).

>> LORETA VIOIU: Good morning, everybody, my name is Loreta Vioiu. I am from the country of Europe, Internet Governance unit where I’m dealing mainly with corporations. So, as you see today, we are a bit overwhelmed. I’m speaking on behalf the consulate in Europe, overwhelmed by the industry. Moreover, I’m the only woman in the panel. Thank you.

>> MARTIN LEVY: Good morning. My name is Martin Levy, I’m from a company called CloudFlare and we are users of Internet exchanges, users around the globe. So I will hopefully take the opposite viewpoint, or opposite information point from the Internet exchange site that Arnold – and we’ll talk about and hopefully that will be useful.

As a slight disclosure, I’m actually also on the board of directors of a small Internet exchange of the United States. When I say small, I mean miniscule, compared to the two major Internet exchanges represented here today, but I will not speak from that point today. Thank you.

>> HENNING LESCH: Okay. Thanks. I think you got an impression that we’re a really interested panel for this workshop. And the panelists and I, we agreed that we won’t show slides or make any boring presentations.

Anyway, I think it’s necessary that we need common sense and understanding of the basics, the basics of core question is what is Internet exchange and what’s not Internet exchange?

As a quick start, the long explanation about what an IX is and what’s not. There’s an excellent short movie from the UIA that tells something about what IX do, what peering is, what the role of Internet exchange is, will take us just three or four minutes. I think it’s a good idea we take a quick look at that.

Please, let’s go.

(Video played.)

When you use the Internet, what happens? Whether you go online to chat with a friend, or send mail, or buy a book, or check the weather, watch a movie, or study the Peloponnesian War, it feels like there’s one wire connecting you directly to the thing you want. But a billion other people are connecting to a billion other things at the same time. How does that happen?

It’s really about making agreements.

Think of networking as a game. It only works if we agree to play by the same rules; otherwise, it’s not much fun. If you can get two or more computers to play together, you have a network. If your friend can do it too, there’s another network. But if you both agree that your networks will play the same way, now you can hook the two together. You have an Internet.

The rules (audio difficulties) – until the whole world is connected. That’s what the network is, a network of networks that share each other.

Every device on the Internet has its own unique address. Anything you send via Internet is really just a message from one device to another. But it doesn’t travel in one big hunk, it gets pulverized into tiny packets of data, each one wrapped with info about what it is, where it came from, and where it’s going. This way your one message can actually take several different paths to its destination. Then, by following the protocol, the receiving device knows how to put it all back together.

The strength of the Internet is that it’s decentralized. With so many possible sections, there’s no single point of failure. If one path gets overloaded or broken, your data just takes a different path. Even if a big chunk of the Internet gets wiped out, your message can still find its way.

Let’s say you use one Internet provider and your friend is on a different one, how does your data really get from one network to the other? Some companies make private connections with each other to exchange traffic. But more and more traffic is flowing through shared service platforms we call Internet exchange points.

An Internet exchange is a place where many different organizations come together to interconnect their technology. There may be access providers, broadcasters, publishers, social network sites, telecomm operators. Nearly anyone who relies on network traffic can benefit from the exchange.

By connecting in a commonplace they save costs and the traffic between them flows faster and much more efficiently. Traditionally, providers have sold each other passage on their networks. But for some providers who regularly exchange traffic, all the buying and selling can be more trouble than its worth. Many of them saw that if they just agree to meet each other halfway, then everybody’s costs go down and the traffic moves more smoothly.

Providers are able to make a single connection to the platform to exchange traffic with many participants. This way of doing things is called peering, and it’s making the Internet faster and more affordable for everybody. The exchange participants make deals with each other according to mutual benefit, so the peering system tends to regulate itself. It may seem they’re giving away their services, but, in fact, each is providing their part of the whole solution the customer need to most efficiently and reliably exchange traffic.

The Internet is open, decentralized, and totally neutral. Its intelligence lives at the edge, not in the core. No single organization controls it, and that’s why it works as well as it does.

By agreeing to cooperate, we all make the Internet happen. And that’s how the Internet happens.

(End of video.)

>> HENNING LESCH: Okay. Yes, I think we have a common understanding what an IX is. We know something about the core function of an IX, and we learned some things about peering and interconnection. And with Sam and Arnold here, we are playing with DE-CIX and – so question from UN-CIX here as well. So we have three of the major IXs here in the world here in this room, I’m very happy to hear from them.

Some questions, as Internet IXs are part of the core infrastructure of the Internet backing up the worldwide Internet, what do they do to ensure that this infrastructure is up and running and resilient?

>> ARNOLD NIPPER: Yeah. As you all know, the Internet started as best effort. And we also did it, I remember, 19 years ago, what was – So what we found out, it’s already more than 10 years ago, we detected that our Internet exchange is major part of the network of our customs and, therefore, we decided to go away from the best effort approach to a business approach. It also means what we did is we offered – to our customers and we really tried to run it as a platform, that means we don’t only have one switch that looks like the Internet exchange or Internet exchange point. Most of the information, it’s just a similar device. – different data centers, interconnected by a lot of fibers, resilient fibers, resilient infrastructure. The devices we are running is high available, that means a lot of – there are still a couple of – how is it one different? So on and so on. So I would say what we do – not only we, actual LINX does the same, I know – I’m sure it’s the same. This is from technical point of view. It’s a really high available platform – and we also have to realize that our customers do not rely on a single Internet exchange. So if the connection to a single Internet exchange point breaks, our customers always – should have the Internet. What our customers do, and we have seen it from the video, they’re peering with other network. Most of our customers, if not almost all, also have an – that means if the connection into the Internet exchange should break, they still have opportunity –

This is what we do to ensure that our infrastructure provides to our customers really high available good service. From our point of view, nothing is 100%. But from what we hear from our customers, our customers are – and obviously it’s enough for –

>> SAM FRANCES: So LINX has perhaps a slightly different perspective, to socially and the governance. We don’t have SNA, we rely on mutual member government structure. From the technical level, it’s going to be a very similar story. One that I’m not particularly well faced to tell, not being an Internet engineer.

But, for example, in addition to something Arnold was talking about; network resilience, we also keep in sight, in London we have two different, two different lines based off different technology to give – the hardware and software. Members of the network should be able to move over to the other line. And it seems not very likely that both are going to have problems at the same time. We also try to provide a degree of geographical resilience by having – exchanges, we have an exchange in Edinburgh, one in Manchester, and we’re investigating other places within the UK.

We have one in – so that also, it’s up to networks to make sure they have multiple choice to get the traffic working. But it’s great for them to have that as well.

>> HENNING LESCH: Okay. So as we learned, I think that the Internet exchange is no single point of failure. But I have a question. When we look to different countries, like, Germany, we have – like, the UK, we have places like The Netherlands, is there just room for one IX in a country who is running as a peering platform or is there room or place for more than one IX?

>> SAM FRANCES: I think it probably depends on the circumstance of the country. In the UK there seems to be room for – UNIX is not the only Internet exchange in the UK. We have ISPs that do weekly support and they’re supported both in the nation of – support. (Inaudible). In the UK it seems like there’s –

>> I can guess here it’s not an easy answer to this question. So there is one point of view is limited exchange, the more participants you have at Internet exchange, the more attractive it is because if there is already let’s say 100 participants, then it makes sense to everyone else to connect with because you are able then to connect to 100 other networks. That means the bigger an Internet exchange is, the more attractive it is to other participants to connect with you.

On the other hand, you can argue the bigger the Internet exchange is, the greater the impact is when this Internet exchange fails. Because then not only 10 connections will fail, 10 networks are impacted by hundreds of thousands of networks will be impacted.

You must imagine Internet exchange is not LINX, – or we, we are not just sending megabits, or gigabits. It’s terabits. It’s really an awful amount of traffic going through Internet exchange. And, therefore, I cannot understand that people argue and say an Internet exchange should not be too large. So maybe for reason one is not enough, but definitely I would say it does not make sense to have 10 Internet exchanges in one metropolitan area. We have seen areas where we – where there were a couple of Internet exchanges and there were too many, because we have to have something what we call brevity. And an Internet exchange needs brevity to be attractive, otherwise no one –

This would be my points of view for a number of Internet exchange.

>> HENNING LESCH: Okay. So Internet exchange is like marketplace to exchange data.

Martin, you’re working for, yes, ISPs and working with IXPs for a long time and many years, can you tell us something about the usage and the values of an IXP for professional users? Why should they or do they use an IX? And what are the benefits for your business?

>> MARTIN LEVY: Yes, thank you. I remember my first Internet exchange meeting, I think it was 1994, which was about the year that – well, that’s when LINX was made in the UK. – was 20 years old. But there were a few other exchanges that were around ahead of that time.

As a company that generates content to be displayed, to be viewed by end users, by mobile, by broadband, by Internet users. It’s vital, as the video talked about, to be able to interconnect networks efficiently, reliably, and to be honest, cost effectively. And Internet exchange points have become one of the key components of getting data to end users in a very efficient manner.

The end users, by the way, we’ve heard a lot of talks over the last day and we’ll continue today, we talk about various aspects, but there’s no getting away from the fact that there is an enormous usage of the Internet. That graph is growing and will continue to grow. It will grow in a mobile world. It will grow in a global environment. It will grow through many different starters in the economy and people and end users. That demand has meant that plumbing up the inside of the Internet, which is, in fact, actually what I’ve been focused on for those last 20-plus years, is a very important aspect of this industry, and not one that’s really visible. Maybe it shouldn’t be to the end user, the end user just wants to use the Internet.

The Internet exchanges, whether we talk about large Internet exchanges in large countries, or we come down and talk about very small exchanges with maybe only four or five members in the democratic Republic of Congo, or in – or if we look at small exchanges in Europe, which may only have 10 or 20 or 30 members, is an order of magnitude that we talk about in Germany or Amsterdam or in London or other places, in other major areas in the U.S. and Europe. These exchanges localize and provide value to the content and to the existing users. As a player that distributes content and moves data around the Internet, those Internet exchanges are vital to make sure we end up with two – and I’m going to talk about practical aspects of moving traffic that the Internet exchanges provide. They provide the ability to keep data local. If 10, 20, 30 Internet ISPs or telcos connect to an exchange inside a small country, and they then keep the traffic from leaving the border and simply improving the latency, the amount of time it takes from creation of the packet to the display of the packet, the end users get a better experience.

By the way, keep in mind for all intents and purposes in the Internet industry, in the content industry, it is those end users paying for the broadband, paying for the mobile, paying for Smart phones that is the beginning of the, quite frankly, the monetary part that is feeding this Internet engine. So those small Internet exchanges, those medium Internet exchanges, or those global, those exchanges that have global players, such as most of the telecom here, all build to improve the ability for those bits to flow.

Could we survive without Internet exchanges? Not at this time. The amount of traffic we’re talking about is – and it is only – it is growing. The hats off to the Internet Service Providers for pluming up the world, but hats off to the Internet exchanges, as well, for letting that pluming interconnect the network in an efficient manner.

So the key point I want to throw out here is that the value of Internet exchanges, whether they be very large, medium, or small in some remote places in the world is they provide ability to keep traffic local, they provide ability to keep traffic flow efficiently between networks, and therefore provide the end user with an experience which they expect.

>> HENNING LESCH: Thanks.

Loreta, I’m very happy to have you here in this workshop. The Council of Europe has a long record in promoting human rights off line and online. Can you tell us something about these activities in this area from the policy perspective going on? And what’s your experience in the Internet age of technical infrastructure may or may not influence human rights or freedom of expression?

>> LORETA VIOIU: Thank you, Henning, for that question.

When you proposed me to be part of this panel, I was thinking what can I do between this technical industry people?

So, when I heard the first speaker saying that the Internet is more strong from best efforts to the business approach, then immediately I was thinking there we go into this big picture.

So I would start by reminding you, I start with the words of Rebecca MacKinnon, which in her first book, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, published in January, 2012, she said, “We cannot assume that the Internet will evolve automatically in a direction that is going to be compatible with democracy. It depends on how the technology is structured, governed, and used. Governments and corporations are working actively to shape the Internet to fit their own needs. The most insidious situations arise when both government and corporations combine their efforts to exercise power over the same people at the same time, in largely unconstrained and unaccountable ways. This is why I argue that if we the people do not wake up and fight for the protection of our own rights and interests of the Internet, we should not be surprised to wake up one day to find they have been programmed, legislated, and sold away.”

So I start from my discussion from here.

We have very, very good and interesting briefing on what Internet exchange point is. So, for us, it’s a place which provides access. In terms of access, so access is the first able to us for freedom of expression and to exercise the other human rights on the Internet. So, therefore, it’s important and we would support this kind of initiative.

Henning proposed me to remind you or to bring your attention to our text that is simply adopted. We are working in a modern day approach. And here in this panel, so we do not see all the multistakeholders as we would like to see. So, therefore, I would invite you to participate in the workshop to play. So you’re expected role, actually. So Civil Society and Internet users because we the Council of Europe put at the center of our policies, actually, the Internet user. We are working to serve the Internet user. So we are working with the government to find ways to better protect and respect human rights on the Internet.

In line with this, I’d like to – to announce, or inform you that recently this year, the Council of Europe adopted a guide to human rights for Internet users, which was a tremendous work. It’s practically transposition of the European Convention of human rights on the environment. It was a tremendous effort which required consultations of all multistakeholder, and we have announced that we have received comments and intervention from more than 30, 30 organization and business and technical industry so on this document.

It was a big effort because we practically prepare a recommendation for government on how to better ensure the respect of human rights and Internet, but in the meantime the recommendation has an annex which addresses the Internet user directly. It is prepared in a very simple language, so it’s easily accessible, it’s user friendly. And for professional, for experts we have prepared, as well, an explanatory memorandum in which we particularly define. So the basis of the arguments we put in this recommendation, it is based on the compassion and it is based on the European Code of human rights case law.

It defines six main rights. And then we start with access and nondiscrimination action. So access, it’s for us very important. So it allows us to go further to allow freedom of expression, freedom of association, and then the other human rights; privacy and rights to –

So this is for this part and I would continue – (inaudible).

>> It’s wonderful. It’s fantastic to hear. I heard it before, but in an Internet exchange context, this is a great tic box. Internet exchange for all intent and purposes – as actually, Arnold started by saying, it’s actually not really about the Internet, it’s about Ethernet. It’s about the physical ability. Internet exchanges do nothing but improve on everything that you said. They don’t stand in the way of packets being filtered in any way, they are additive. They are always additive to an Internet ecosystem without an Internet exchange. They take the connectivity from party A to party B and remove an intermediary where traffic may even flow geographically or through an entity we don’t want in the path. They provide one-to-one connectivity. So at every point in the basic mindset of what an Internet exchange does, they take every – every requirement, as in not applicable or, yes, we help that in some way.

I talk about bandwidth, but you talked about it from human rights and other points of view. I realized while listening to that, yes, in an Internet exchange power, it’s very important to understand. Tic mark, we did that.

>> HENNING LESCH: Okay. Very interesting, both of those.

Loreta reminded me that we have a workshop, so we’d like to open the floor for questions from the people participating in this room and all the people jumping in on the remote participation. So, could you please give the lady the microphone?

Can you please be so kind and say your name and where you’re from?

>> JOANNA: My name is Joanna, and I’m from Poland. And I would like to benefit from this workshop to understand something better. I’m going to start with a simple question and then explain what I mean.

You said that there is this human right – not so much. But can IXPs be used for filtering, for example, in the democratic Republic of Congo? I mean, we have more and more evidence that IXP are very important development factor and that exactly – and there’s not that many IXPs in Africa, because –

And my first question is actually what inhibits the development of IXPs in the developing world? And then the second is, are there threats that are related to building an IXP in non-democratic country? I don’t think we have much problem here, I mean, with the people in this room. I don’t understand, I’m beginner in this IXP world.

>> They’re brilliant questions. They’re brilliant questions if you’re a beginner. But as a reference point, I’ll point you to look at the AXIS, A-X-I-S project, AXIS 1 and AXIS 2, that has been funded by the African Union and has been predominantly executed by the Internet Society. It’s not a hard search to find these two projects, and that will give you great insight on some of the issues specifically inside Africa.

So let’s go back and talk about and answer your questions, because they’re good ones.

Does an Internet exchange as a central environment provide a platform to filter, or to mark, which is what you asked. And that’s up to the members. For all intents and purposes, as a content player, I voluntarily pay for the London Internet Exchange; DE-CIX in France, AM-CIX in Amsterdam, and a list of 20, 30, 40 other Internet exchanges around the world.

As a commercial company, I look at it as a return on investment. But I also have a conscious mindset. If I thought that something awry was happening, whether those exchanges were outside Washington, D.C., or Valley, or Hong Kong, or Singapore, or Sidney, Australia, or here in Europe, I’d disconnect. It wouldn’t be good for my company.

Now, there are much more even non-commercial entities, whether they be educational networks like Enrens or global educational networks, or small individual companies who have an amazingly high content and they hold these Internet exchanges to a very high standard. The Internet exchanges here in the room are membership based. I have a vote. If I don’t like something that the London Internet Exchange is doing, I will stand at the microphone – I’ve been known to stand at the microphone – and I will vote against it.

This happened a year, or year and a half ago with a particular issue. No, not to deal with the two subjects you discussed. So, from that point of view at the highest level, there is this great checks and balances. The Internet industry, the players, the infrastructure players are very aware of the issues and don’t particularly want it. So that’s the high-level answer. And it really would take a lot more time to delve into it. You asked about one country and you asked about – it’s an effort. It’s taken a long time. But that last question you asked, which is sort of what barriers are there to generating Internet exchanges? It turns out most of the time when I look at harder to reach places, it’s the government, it’s the policy makers, it’s the regulators who fear and worry about this.

Without naming names, I’ll give you an example. A Internet was built in a very rich country, it had a dominant telco player. And it was built by – it was built by the government and it was very – beautiful and opening ceremony, and then it shut down. The reason it shut down was because the same department is also responsible for the telco. They said, hey, we don’t understand this Internet exchange. It could eat into our profits, so shut it down. Very short-sighted and very poor mindset. Interestingly enough, if you had removed the government from that and talked to all the individual ISPs, all the individual telcos, they would all benefit from the Internet exchange. But because it is a country where there is implicit requirements for a license before you do anything, the government, the policy makers, the regulatory bodies are involved very early and, therefore, these things either take forever or never happen.

We don’t have that here in Europe. We don’t have that in the U.S. We don’t have that in an awful lot of countries, and that is what has made the Internet exchanges so successful.

They’re measured by the number of players that connect. The more people connect, the more value they have. So if you go look, and look at the AXIS project in Africa as one example, but if you go look at this you’ll see the balance, but you’ll see where there’s government control and lack of government control and that graph matches awfully close to where there is success in Internet exchanges, with one or two exceptions.

>> HENNING LESCH: Thank you.

Loreta, I think we already shifted or broadened the scope to developing countries. What is your experience from policy making perspective? You can jump in.

>> LORETA VIOIU: I think everything sounds so wonderful. But still, we have cases of filtering. We have cases of blocking. We have taking down of content. We have a lot of problems related to exercise of human rights on the Internet in certain countries. Moreover, those practices in certain countries can affect the exercise of human rights in other countries. Like, for example, we have now preoccupation on the cross border flow of Internet traffic, and they control the flow of Internet traffic. And we have cases of countries – country, to which takes Internet from its neighbors and there are problems there. So everything sounds so wonderful.

Then I was thinking, in 2008, the Council of Europe worked together with Euro – which is European Internet Service Provider Association. We work together to prepare human rights guidelines for Internet Service Providers. And there was a commitment there that they communicated, is about raising awareness and it’s about respect and promote the human rights.

And I wonder, how many of the Internet Service Providers mentioned in their service agreements or their contract services to Internet users that they are bound by this human rights governance so that we prepared together?

So I think these are issues that require our attention and that is why we don’t speak of them. Thank you.

>> ERNST LANGMANTEL: Hi, my name is Ernst Langmantel, I’m from the Internet Foundation of Austria. I have a question following up to what you said. I think limited exchange points, member phase, and if there is something going on, you know, as you said previous, can stand up and say no. One thing is if we will all stand up and make – I suppose. And the more important point is how can we be sure that a lot of things going on that the members do not know. So, for example, in the USA, British counterpart, makes a comment with exchange point, I’m sure that wouldn’t be – around the community and has no chance to stand up and say no.

>> That’s a mine field of a question.

Yeah, your question, let’s deal with it on a membership-based Internet exchange, then we can talk about it on commercial Internet exchange, but I’m going to keep this very simple. Membership-based exchanges even – whether they’re very large organizations that may employ 10, 20, 30 people, or very small, I’ll take Toronto Internet exchange as an example, it merely employs one person. I think it’s sitting at 150 members at the present time. You want to go see what it looks like and go check every fiber and see what’s going on? Just phone up John and wander over to Toronto and have a look. Do the same in the Sky tower in Auckland, New Zealand, where the Internet exchange that services the most of the northern part of the country New Zealand is based. Been there, done that, posted pictures of all the equipment on Twitter.

Ditto through many, many, many Internet exchanges around the world. The membership-based exchanges have Board of Directors that are voted by the members. And I’ll argue against the comment that you opened with. I actually do sort of, you know – this has nothing to do with the Internet, I do believe in democracy, I do believe in one person standing up and saying no, even if no one else agrees with them. You have to start with one, and then you end up with hopefully two and three, and pretty soon you have an oligarchy, you know, a whole movement on your hand.

But the point is you, you have in a membership-based exchange, the ability to vote a Board of Directors, Board of Directors that oversees what the nonprofit organization that runs it, which is based here, so you have that level of checks and balances.

Am I saying an absolute answer to you? No, because I can’t. But I bet you if you also knock on the door and go see what’s going on, under most circumstances, 99 percent of the circumstances, you pretty much get to see everything as a member. So that’s only half the answer. The other half of the answer should be answered by the Internet exchanges themselves. I’m just giving you the end user and being a member and having a vote.

>> I find it hard to believe that we would – I find it extremely hard to believe that we would voluntary drop everything and – (inaudible). If we did, I think we would be – have a high degree of confidence that the members would, would use their voice, would use their influence. Whoever made that decision, I would –

We you said about – that’s a problem for all companies, potentially. There are things like –

But also, even if these things are mandated to – and again, I find this unlikely, even if such things are – there are an awful lot of networks which – isn’t their only possible choice. They not only have a choice of Internet exchange, when you have a choice between us – (inaudible) – between a whole range of ISPs that are in different countries. The fastest way for a government to sabotage any Internet exchange in their country is when they get that. So I think those are all things which – which provide –

>> Hello, my name is Chris – I would like to ask you, because you mentioned the gravity lack of nature of the role in between IXPs. So how do you consider, for example, how do you relate to some actors, governments drawing, understanding networks of Internet globally, so how would you respond to them highlighting the dynamic nature of – between IXPs, as I understood – global. I’ll respond to the players who claim that the role is understanding and – who could draw us a map as – traffic.

>> I think if I understand your question, that it really applies, I think to Internet Service Providers more than Internet exchange points. Internet exchange points are far more like static roundabouts. They exist in one place. They provide the ability to move traffic between multiple players. The type of question that you’re asking is more towards Internet Service Providers to telecoms that route traffic globally amongst many cities or around many continents. The world of routing is based upon many, many aspects, whether it be cost, whether it be latency, method efficiency, whether it be bandwidth availability, or whether you’re routing around a cable breakage, undersea cable that is broken, or maybe a cable that has been dug up in the street. So I don’t think it affects the Internet exchanges, per say, but I think it affects the way traffic routes. And we all hear occasionally, I think there was a story – I want to say, actually, it affected Armenia, actually. I think it was the story about a woman in Georgia who dug up a fiber cable and taken out a large amount of the country or large amount of Armenia. This is an example of a single point of failure, which there is no route around. But that is happening less and less as we progress through more and more telcos – So I think the question is more for the telcos than Internet exchange.

Does that make sense or am I missing something?

>> The question is if you consider the global Internet government structures in the future, would you want them to be built so they secure the freedom for anyone to set up their own IXP and – robbing the – so that would be setting up IXP no one could enforce their own IXPs –

>> HENNING LESCH: Yeah. So everyone is able to set up an Internet exchange. If you want to do it, do it.

>> – that will remain in the future.

>> So you set up an Internet exchange next to – but you have to have parties to connect to you.

>> Yes. Sorry. There’s a key point about security. From an Internet exchange – so, as an end user, not Internet, but end user, we pay our membership and we pay twice. You pay once as a member, that’s part of that vote, part of that supporting organization. The second thing we pay for is the physical ports that we interconnect with. We pay for them because they cost money. Fiber-optic cable, a fiber-optic receiver, a space in a rack, power behind that rack. These cost real money, so we pay for that, and that’s acceptable. And the more we use, the more we pay, which is also acceptable. So what do I get from the Internet exchange? What does the Internet exchange expect to get from me? Well, I get from the Internet exchange a reliable fabric that doesn’t disappear on me; that it operates and provides the ability – if I send a bit down a fiber optic cable, it will send it to the right location, the right player within the large roundabout, if we use that analogy.

What does the Internet exchange operator expect from me? It expects me to follow certain well-established protocols. These part of the IT and CTIP protocols that are defined by the IETF, and the reason why I can talk to some random network that I may never have physically met, but have swapped an e-mail with and set up a peering session because we talk the same language. But we also agree to the same set of security controls. And the security in this case means that we will not send an invalid packet. When I chit chat with that other ISP, we do it with a known protocol and both of our boxes, both of our hardwares adhere to that. We also agree with the Internet exchange that if we change our hardware, because there’s a certain level of security they want to make sure an odd box doesn’t send off random packets, but we will inform them and we’ll deal with that. That’s all now fairly well managed by Internet exchange points.

So the final part is, you mentioned DGP, and you mentioned this is the protocol how the Internet talks and it says I’m over here and I know somebody else is over there. Again, we use filtering, but not in the sense of filtering what we talk about from human rights point of view, but we talk about, like, a driver’s license. My driver’s license says I can ride a motorcycle – and I can drive a motorcycle and I can drive a car. That’s my legal right. It doesn’t say I can drive a bus, or a lorry, or a an airplane. So in the same way my protocol, I would go to a common repository and I would record what I’m allowed to talk. And my ISP that I connect with, I would go check their repository and I would say, you can send me route 1, 2, 3, but you can’t send me 4 or 5. And that filtering, which is a different use of filtering than we used before, is what keeps the Internet sane. And, yes, occasionally there are hiccups. But that’s where the underlying world, it’s outside of the Internet exchange purview, but that’s what keeps the Internet working. That’s why we can set here and look at a web page anywhere in the world. Routing does work.

>> OSMAN COSKUNOGLU: Thank you. My name is Osman, and I’m from Turkey. I think you answered my question. You talked about reliable fabric between those who communicate, but that reliable – the reliability of that fabric or mutual agreements, if you change something, you know, informing about that and coming to an agreement, they don’t, you said, include human rights issues as Loreta mentioned. Actually, Loreta asked a question to IXPs, and IXPs tell their customers that they’re not obliged to go along with, comply with COE’s principles. Do they say that? I think she asked that question, it’s close, number 1.

Number 2, is it necessary? Number 3, how can it be done?

Any comments on those, I would appreciate. Thank you.

>> HENNING LESCH: Okay. So do we have any more questions in the room or from the remote part?

>> MATTHIJS VAN BERGEN: Hello, I’m Matthijs van Bergen from the Netherlands, Legal advisor. I drafted a report for the Council of Europe on protecting human rights through net neutrality. One thing that is worrying a lot of people in net neutrality field is the advent of specialized services and QOS enabled services, assured service quality product. And these prioritized services appear to be interconnectible. Is there a role of AXIS to interconnect these kind of separate from the Internet services?

>> HENNING LESCH: Arnold? Anybody?

>> ARNOLD NIPPER: So, actually, what we do is, we are currently interconnecting our customers on their demands. So when – and we currently do not see or have not yet seen customers who say, I want to have implemented different class of services, please provide special queue switch. If there would be demand from customers who say, we want to have differ class of services, and they would – I would say, yes. One more, this is we have to follow the demand.

>> MATTHIJS VAN BERGEN: If that type of demand would be a problem concerning net neutrality where the capacity of the Internet would suffer, or the availability of the Internet would suffer due to the advent of specialized services taking over the Internet, it could be a problem. But I do see that this would probably, you know, the players to regulate would not necessarily be the AXIS, but the customers of the AXIS, the ISP. So, you know, limitations on specialized services would probably not be directed on AXIS. But it is an interesting fact to know, or an interesting thing to know whether ISPs are actually asking or using these type of interconnections. Thank you for clarifying that currently it’s not the case. Thank you.

>> ARNOLD NIPPER: So just to add a sentence. The Internet exchange, or at least DE-CIX, and I’m pretty sure all the others are – absolutely neutral. So there’s no chance for a single customer that says, please prefer my packet or my frame. There’s no chance. So we receive the packet and regardless who the customer is, we will treat all packets the same.

>> MATTHIJS VAN BERGEN: Maybe could we just get a clarification what this statement, which seems very clear, means in relationship to leaving the best effort model behind and going towards SLAs? What does that mean in the context of access?

>> ARNOLD NIPPER: Regarding SLAs, that means what we provide to the customer, say, okay, you can expect our services, that means basically the potence available 99.9 percent. If we do not meet this criteria, you get money back. Simply put like that.

No, no, it’s not – of course, we also have what we guarantee is you can expect that the packet laws and jitter, round trip time and so on, through our network or through the – switching is that and that and that. If we do not meet this criteria, you get money back.

>> For all those parameters related to how quickly packets are delivered and not what’s in them.

>> ARNOLD NIPPER: Yes, regardless what’s in the packet. This SLA is for all the customers. See. And we do exactly what I’ve said before, we treat each and every packet the same.

>> Yeah. Actually, I think within the United States, quite heated net neutrality conversations in the last year, there has been a statement from some of the major providers; Google and Facebook and Microsoft and the likes, which has basically said that we have no interest in any form of quality of service, style, connectivity. We explicitly don’t – I mean, most content providers have no interest in Internet exchanges in any way, shape, manner or form. The service agreement that we want is there is still light at the end of fiber and it still works. It’s a very basic service level agreement. Because we talk through the Internet exchange to all the other ISPs. And everyone is, are you still there? Yeah, we’re still here. We’re still working. Good, let’s continue. That chit chat happens all the time because that’s part of the process that keeps all of the connectivity up.

That’s the first answer to sort of the question you asked. The other aspect of this is, please keep in mind and if you go look at what’s going on in the United States at the moment, which is becoming – okay a personal comment here – a bit of a fiasco, whenever you bring in the conversation towards broadband provider, broadband customers and the like, of the concept of quality of service controls in some way, you end up with executives that will completely make a fool of themselves.

So, for example, the language that was used in the last week or so in the United States was when talking about quality, and whether it be, by the way, for over the top video, or maybe for questionable content that may not match a particular either government or group’s interest, they talk about, well, the slow lane and the fast lane. Of course, the executives hate that. They come and say, no, no, we’re talking about a fast lane and a very fast lane.

>> Yeah. No comment. I’ll leave it as is.

>> HENNING LESCH: Thanks.

>> – what everyone else has said, but just to say that the only sense of neutrality that I think matters to you is – also, as a mutual organization, strong – staying neutral on topics of that are – that there’s no consensus about within the membership. And it’s kind of in the nature of everything, they bring together people who tend to be on opposite sides of this particular debate. They bring together content network, they bring together access providers and so on.

Any Internet exchange strives to remain neutral on that, controversial on its numbers is probably going to remain neutral on this issue. It’s probably not the best target for this debate. – or as an organization for that matter.

>> HENNING LESCH: Okay. Well, already running out of time. But I saw there’s a question on the site, so we try to bring it in. Does it work?

>> Yeah, I’m Carl – telecomm rep. Actually, continuing on this net neutrality issue. You said that the Internet has evolved from best effort to business approach, and that these commercial agreements may lead to – or evolve through those. I think these commercial agreements are often also here today referred to as a net neutrality issue, a topic. So what’s your take on this? Is there something broken that needs to be regulated with net neutrality regulation?

>> It’s a good question to ask Internet exchange points. I already have a clear statement saying.

>> I would say the net neutrality, or we are talking about the net neutrality not because the Internet is technically broke, but because it’s commercially broke.

The model use the Internet as much as possible, you pay a flat fee, it will work. It simply does not work. And now, companies are realizing that it’s a wrong model. You have to think about it. Where do you have this model that you can use as much as a resource for a flat fee? Nowhere else.

>> HENNING LESCH: Okay. We can make just two last questions. We have to go in the corner and this guy there. So we’re – oh, and a third question, okay, from the remote participants. Okay. But we’re really running out of time.

>> Just very quickly about the flat fee model. In Canada, there’s actually a big problem with where the regulator changed from having a flat fee to paying for what you eat, basically. But because there is a fundamental problem in the amount of competition between access providers, the access providers also sell competing services, services that are competing with online services, they make the limit in such an extent that they can remove competition from, for example, online video. So they make the amount, they limits of bandwidth so low, or the limits of total gigabytes that you can use per month so low that people are very much disincentivized to use online services instead of their own specialized services. For me that would be a big problem.

Also you need to take into account that, you know, maybe electricity or gas, or these kind of things, they are endless – or they are finite or they cost money. But routing is not necessarily – just, there is also a limit to how much routing can be done, but it’s not necessarily the amount of extra money that it cost per bit is not directly transported to the customer, basically. That’s not how I understood it, at least.

>> I certainly know that running an Internet exchange the size of LINX, or DE-CIX, or UNSIX is way, way, way more expensive than running a small exchange. So it’s directly related to that, to shift the traffic around. And there is a relationship between the amount of traffic and price. And I completely agree with you, we have – now we are in a situation where it’s not easy to change. Perhaps we should have done it 10 to 15 years ago. We didn’t do it. Now, I completely agree, it’s hard to change.

>> ANYA ORLOVA: Question from remote participation, basically from Twitter. How much can NSA save by on IXPs and does it increase latency dramatically or is it invisible?

>> You should ask NSA how much it can spy. So what we heard from Snowden, we spy a lot. But if there are spies on IXPs, so I could answer this question for our IXPs.

They do not spy on DE-CIX.

>> HENNING LESCH: Sam, something to say?

>> SAM FRANCES: Who knows what they can do? We do know anything about Internet spying. As far as we know, it’s not happening.

>> If I may chip in here. I just want to know why that is, because I would say from – point of view, like for secret service, like NSH, H – GHQC or GCQH, or whatever they’re called in England, I would say that Internet exchange points are a rather natural pick because other than going through, like, what a trust independent service providers, I would find them all there by the back panel in the IXP. So to some extent at least, so I just wonder why we both tell us that you haven’t been yet approached by any kind of – I mean, it’s a good thing, but as to one know why agencies like NSA, for example, do not find Internet exchange points a natural pick?

>> Because there are easier ways to spy.

>> HENNING LESCH: Okay. Yeah, we are already running out of time.

To follow up this discussion, the afternoon there’s a plenary, it’s called the Rule of Law and ISPs. And I think it’s related to the questions about NSA surveillance, human rights, freedom of expression, the question about intermediary liability and all these things. So I would strongly recommend it for you. The panel is called the Rule of Law.

So we’re out of time and I would like to close this workshop. So thanks for all the people here in the room, the remote participants and the panelists for their interest and willingness to participate and contribute to this workshop. Thank you.

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