IdahoIX – Rules and Policies
The Idaho Internet Exchange (IdahoIX) has a few rules and policies to ensure the short- and long-term health of the exchange fabric.
- Peering is bilateral except for the exchange route servers. There is no Multi-Lateral Peering Agreement (MPLA).
- Participants must use BGP-4 or its successor and must set NEXT_HOP_SELF if advertising routes from other IdahoIX participants.
- Participants may not point default or otherwise use another participant’s or IdahoIX’s resources without permission.
- There are only three ethertypes allowed: 0x0800 (IPv4), 0x0806 (ARP) and 0x86dd (IPv6).
- Broadcast ARP and multicast ICMPv6 Neighbor Discovery packets are the only permitted non-unicast traffic. Per-neighbor timeouts that result in flooded (broadcast/multicast) packets should be set to 4 hours or as close to that as possible in the case of vendor limitations. Short timeouts may result in quarantine.
- Participant ACLs must not violate neighbor discovery norms, since doing so will result in excess flooded packets on the community fabric and burden for IdahoIX administrators.
- Participants must be responsive to other participants and IdahoIX administrators to protect the short- and long-term health of the exchange fabric. Urgent issues may result in the suspension of a participant to protect the fabric. For non-urgent issues, if a participant is unresponsive to concerns raised by an IdahoIX administrator, an IdahoIX administrator will notify the non-responding participant via their PeeringDB and IdahoIX contact emails of their need to respond in order to avoid suspension from the IdahoIX. The length of time to determine if a participant is unresponsive, and time to suspension, will depend on the severity of the matter, each not to exceed two weeks.
- Participants must not allow IdahoIX subnets to propagate externally from their network and should minimize internal propagation. If a participant’s network beyond their IdahoIX edge router(s) can reach the IdahoIX subnet addresses, ACLs will be requested in order to prevent this from happening.
- Participants may not sniff traffic between other participants.
- Participant ACLs must not violate neighbor discovery norms, since doing so will result in excess flooded packets on the community fabric and burden for IdahoIX administrators.
- For IPv4, this means that a participant’s router must be configured to receive and respond to ARP packets from all IdahoIX participants, even those that are not direct peers.
- For IPv6, this means that participant routers must receive and respond to ICMPv6 neighbor solicitation packets from both fe80::/10 and all IdahoIX participant addresses, including those that are not direct peers, directed toward fe80::/10, ff02::1:ff00:0/104, and the participant’s unicast IdahoIX assignments.
Press Release Policy
If your organization plans to release press releases specifically mentioning the Idaho Internet Exchange, please coordinate with IdahoIX administrators as a courtesy prior to contacting the media. Emailing to info_a_t_idahoix.net is the best method of contact. In addition, please keep in mind that IdahoIX participation does not grant organizations any rights to use other participants’ names, logos or other information.
Join the Exchange
With every participant and every connection, IdahoIX grows stronger, creating faster and more reliable network trafficking. When we work together toward a common goal, we all benefit. Join IdahoIX today.