Here is a summary of the technical activities that have taken place at France-IX during the last quarter of 2020:

General news

• Backbone dark fibers renewal

An evolving market, more stringent requirements and new projects for 2021 have driven a request for proposal to renew, or create backbone dark fiber links. France-IX links have been as a result divided between two providers : GTT and IELO. 10 links in total will be deployed. Many of the existing routes will benefit from this renewal, with younger fibers, shorter lengths, better build quality, enabling optical short range links that were not considered before.

Besides, a new point of presence in Marcoussis (south of Paris) will be opened by the end of Q1-2021 and dual attached to our cores with those dark fibers: DATA4. We also took advantage of this opportunity to enhance Telehouse 3 PoP backbone links.

The deployment of those fibers will be carried out throughout the first half of 2021. There will of course be no impact at all on customer services.

• OTN capacity upgrades

Last quarter, we mentioned the completion of a request for proposal to enhance the capacity and possibilities of our optical OTN network.

This fall, we have successfully deployed Nokia 1830 PSI-M muxponders at PAR5 and TH2 PoPs. Those transmission devices, with their high capacity waves, enabled us to increase the interconnection capacity between our cores from redundant 400Gbps to redundant 600Gbps. The hardware is designed to allow evolution up to redundant 1,2Tbps per chassis with minor configuration and cabling.

This flexibility and capacity reserve will be used to support the upcoming wave circuit services and to anticipate peering traffic increase.

• Merger France-IX / Rezopole

As you probably already know, the merger between France-IX and Rezopole was voted with a large majority during both associations’ AGMs last December. This merger is a huge opportunity for both structures in many aspects. On the technical side, the teams have started a joint training effort. France-IX will learn a lot from Rezopole’s experience in hosting, NaP services and training services. For Rezopole, this merger is an opportunity to grow and give a new momentum to regional development.

The biggest change that members are likely to observe during the first 2021 quarter is the launch of a new gateway service linking Paris, Lyon and Marseilles’s infrastructures. More coming about this, stay tuned !

• Nokia platform roll-out

As mentioned in previous quarterly reports, the rollout of the new Nokia platform is going on in our main PoPs. Telehouse 2, Interxion PAR2 and Interxion MRS1 are already migrated.

Our second core PoP, Interxion PAR5, was migrated this October.

A few figures about this migration :

• 31 customer ports
• 77 backbone ports

New Nokia deployments will take place in 2021. Corresponding maintenances will be announced with a 2-week notice, as usual.

Key figures

A few figures about Q4-2020:

• New customer ports (including upgrades)
  •    10G: 10 ports
  •    100G: 10 ports

1GbE ports are not sold anymore and will be progressively phased out in the mid-term. We encourage members to upgrade their connection to 10GbE.

• Availability during Q4-2020 & NOC service
  • Paris: 99.999%
  • Marseille: 99.999%
  • NOC tickets handled: 63

• Outages
  • Paris : Satellite ports flapped during 30 seconds on er2.th2. More than 10% impacted (103 IP among 478)
  • Marseille : a RAM issue on RS2 was detected. During the troubleshooting, RS1 was reloaded by accident. No RS was thus available in MRS during 90 secs.

Upcoming projects and operations

• Scaleway DC2 and DC3 will be equipped with new Nokia routers during the first semester.
• A private room will be opened in the brand new Telehouse datacenter, rue Leon Frot in Paris. A 400G-enabled chassis will be installed there ! Stay tuned for pricing offers !