2020/2021 Annual General Meeting

Thursday, May 20, 2021
3:00 to 5:00 P.M.
AGM to start at 3:30 P.M.

Location: Zoom online
Email   info at mbix.ca for Zoom link.

Open to all interested in IXs

All 7 Board of Directors positions open for election.

July 2020 Upgrades

Yesterday, the MBIX Ops Team completed upgrades on its core switches, as part of our ongoing mission to operate high-capacity network equipment.

First, we upgraded to the latest NX-OS software release, and upgraded what Cisco calls the electronic programmable logic device (EPLD)–the silicon that forwards packets.

The bigger job was to replace the 294 Portage switch, an older Nexus 3064-X with a new Nexus 93180YC-FX.  Now having two high-performance switches, we were able to upgrade the link between 167 Lombard and 294 Portage from 40 Gbps to 100 Gbps, over dark fibre.

This diagram shows how the MBIX peering network is setup today.  Blue circles are the members’ routers, and the green rectangles are the MBIX switches. The light grey rectangles are the datacentres which colocate the MBIX switches.

July 2020 MBIX Network Diagram

These upgrades ensure that any member can send a line-rate data flow (1 or 10 Gbps) to another member without concern that the MBIX fabric could become saturated and drop packets. Packet loss is a key metric of performance, and MBIX members will continue to enjoy congestion-free exchange of data with these network upgrades.

 

MBIX Becomes MANRS Participant

MBIX becomes a MANRS IXP Participant. Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) is a global initiative, supported by the Internet Society, that provides crucial fixes to reduce the most common routing threats.

For more information about what we are doing, please see the Route Servers page.

 

Westman Communications Group joins MBIX

MBIX is happy to announce that Westman Communications Group (AS19016) has connected to MBIX. Westman started as a Cable TV provider based in Brandon, and now offers ISP services in about 30 communities in western Manitoba.

Westman is the first member connection at Manitoba Hydro Telecom‘s 360 Portage Avenue facility, operating with a 10G link into the MBIX switch there. As they’re peering with the MBIX Route Servers, other Route Server members will begin exchanging traffic right away.

MBIX is now exchanging traffic between members in three Winnipeg datacenters, furthering MBIX objectives of being neutral and easily accessible.

Once again having a Manitoba ISP connecting to MBIX helps to keep internet traffic within Manitoba, improving performance and reducing latency.