25th Anniversary of Multihoming at a local Manitoba ISP

An interesting bit of Manitoba networking history from Curtis Coleman. Curtis mentioned he implemented multihoming at Pangea between MBnet and PSINet on May 8th, 1997. The following year he added connections to UUNET and Sprint Canada. Pangea was the first local ISP to implement multihoming. MBnet was multihomed between Bell and Sprint in early 1999.

May 2021 Upgrades

Part of our missed-post-at-the-time series. Story should have been posted 2021-05-01

MBIX has added a peering switch on the 8th floor of 355 Portage.  This switch resides within LES.NET colocation, and Fastnet can also provide optical cross-connects to the MBIX switch.

This expansion is a Cisco Nexus 3064-X switch, with 4x10Gbps links to the 294 Portage peering switch.

We’ve also added a 100G  link between 294 Portage and 167 Lombard, running a port-channel with 200 Gbps capacity.

Check out our latest network topology diagram, showing the current peering network:

Diagram of MBIX network equipment and topology. Switch at 294 Portage has a link to each of: 355 Portage, 360 Portage, 167 Lombard

2021 MBIX Network Topology

Flex Networks joins MBIX

Part of our missed-post-at-the-time series. Story should have been posted 2021-05-10

Flex Networks (AS19523) has joined MBIX. Flex is a Canadian ISP which has recently expanded into Manitoba. They operate a fibre optic network in several cities to service their customers. Another local peer means more local peering, which is the goal of MBIX.

Flex has connected at 10 Gbps to the MBIX switch at 355 Portage Avenue.  This new expansion Cicso Nexus 3064 switch is connected by four 10 Gbps CWDM waves back to the MBIX switch at 294 Portage.

This expands MBIX presence to four facilities in downtown Winnipeg, giving ISPs another choices of location to plug in their network.

Fastnet and LES.NET have partnered with MBIX to offer cross-connects from members’ equipment to the MBIX switch.

MERLIN joins MBIX

Part of our missed-post-at-the-time series. Story should have been posted 2020-11-15

MBIX is pleased to announce that MERLIN (AS16796) has joined MBIX, connecting to our 167 Lombard switch at 10 Gbps.

MERLIN is an specialized ISP providing service to many educational institutions in Manitoba, including school boards and post-secondary institutions.

This Manitoba network serving thousands of users will be able to exchange data with other MBIX members at high performance.