Time has come to share a full update on the main technical actions and projects achieved by France-IX on its infrastructure during the second quarter of 2019:

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Network RFP

Last April, we launched a tender to evaluate different vendors, with the objective to replace parts of our network infrastructure in the short/mid-term. The selection process has come to an end this week, with only 2 selected candidates after intensive analyses and comparisons by France-IX. Equipment integration and validation will be carried out during a proof of concept (PoC) session by the end of July or August, depending on calendar adjustments.

The first PoPs planned to benefit from the new equipment are Interxion PAR2 and Interxion MRS1 by end of the year. Next deployments will be progressive and may start with Telehouse 2 or Interxion PAR5 during 2020.

NOC RFP

Today our NOC (Network Operations Center) is operated by Expereo (formerly Border6), which will stop performing this activity by end of 2019. Consequently, we launched earlier this year a tender to find the best substitute to replace Expereo. We are currently analysing offers from different suppliers.

Capacity upgrade on Interxion PAR1 and Equinix PA7 PoPs

In order to sustain a growing demand on 1G and 10G ports, we replaced our former Extreme MLX-8 devices with Juniper EX9214 chassis. Their higher port density ensures that we can connect any new or upgrading customer on a long-term basis. This allows us to offer a comprehensive quality of service by precabling 100G ports at PA7 and PAR1 in order to provision them in several days.

PASS Service : Paris/Marseille interconnection

Two 100G circuits have been successfully activated between Paris and Marseille, resulting in the PASS service launch on May 15. Since then, 12 members have already been connected and 5 others will be soon. For more information about the PASS service, please check the following URL : https://www.franceix.net/en/solutions/pass-service/

Extension of France-IX Paris peering LAN from /23 to /22

As you already know, we moved from 37.49.236.0/23 IPv4 subnet prefix to 37.49.236.0/22 subnet 3 months ago. At this point, 76% of members have updated their configuration … leaving approximately 100 members who have not.

This operation only takes a couple of minutes, and is required to reach any future member that will be connected to France-IX Paris. Moreover, we plan to use new monitoring tools that will not work well on legacy /23 IP interfaces. For all those reasons, we strongly encourage you to update your netmask, as soon as possible.

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Key technical figures for Q2-2019:

• Customer ports connected in the past 3 months:

– 1G: no ports

– 10G: 18 ports

– 100G: 1 port

• Availability for Q2-2019:

– Paris: 100%

– Marseille: 100%

• NOC tickets for Q2-2019: 84 tickets

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No outages during Q2-2019

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Next main actions and mid/long term projects:

– Backbone RFP : as stated above, a PoC will take place at the end of July and during August, aiming at checking the equipment’s compliance and validate its interoperability with the existing infrastructure.

– NOC RFP : we plan to select a NOC provider during August and start the transfer of skills with the existing NOC in September.

– New member portal development: in an effort to enhance our information to all of you, we are improving our “Tools” customer portal. The new version is now scheduled for Q3 2019.