Tanzania Internet eXchange -- TIX

Technical requirements

  1. Peers will be provided with 2U rack space. There might be restrictions in the future when capacity is limited.
  2. TIX provides its participants with a layer-2 Ethernet switch fabric and a layer-3 route reflector.
  3. Participants may only connect equipment which they own and operate themselves to the TIX. They may not connect equipment on behalf of third parties.
  4. Peers may only utilize a single layer-2 MAC address to place a single layer-3 router per port allocated from the TIX switch fabric.
    This layer-3 router shall be housed at TIX facility.
  5. It is preferred that each participant have their own Autonomous System number, peers without an ASN allocation will be assigned an ASN from private ASN space by the TIX Management Committee. Any peer who has previously been connected to the TIX using private ASN and then later acquires their own public ASN must notify the TIX Management Committee as soon as possible in order to incorporate this development into the BGP peering at TIX.
  6. TIX participants will advertise routes to their IP address range(s) to the TIX route reflector(s).
    Peers shall not advertise routes other than their own, without the prior written permission of the assigned holder of the address space.
  7. Participants will peer with all other participants at the TIX without bias or disregard.
  8. Peers shall not advertise a next-hop other than their own.
  9. Peering between routers across TIX will be via BGP-4.
  10. Peers shall not generate unnecessary route flap, or advertise unnecessarily specific routes in peering sessions with other participants across TIX.
  11. Peers shall not point their default route to the TIX.
    Participants must have one separate link to the Internet, independent of the Internet Exchange.
  12. Participants must, on all interfaces connected to the TIX switch fabric, disable Proxy ARP, ICMP redirect, CDP, IRDP, directed broadcasts, IEEE802 Spanning Tree, any interior routing protocol broadcasts, and any MAC layer broadcasts other than ARP or inverse-ARP.
  13. Peers must, on all interfaces connected to the TIX switch fabric, disable any duplex, speed, or other link parameter auto-sensing.
  14. Peers must set netmasks on all interfaces connected to the TIX to include the entire TIX peering LAN. (currently 198.32.179.0/25)
  15. Participants shall not announce ("leak") prefixes including some or all of the TIX peering LAN to other networks without explicit permission of TIX.
  16. Participants must clearly label all equipment that resides at the TIX facility with ownership and contact information.
  17. Participants will not touch equipment and/or cabling owned by other participants and installed at TIX or in the room containing the TIX without the explicit permission of the participant who owns the equipment.
  18. Peers should not routinely use the TIX switch fabric for carrying traffic between their own routers.
  19. Participants will not install traffic monitoring software to monitor traffic passing through TIX, except through their own ports. TIX may monitor any port but will keep any information gathered confidential, except where required by law or where a violation of this Memorandum of Understanding has been determined by TISPA.
  20. TIX does make statistics of the aggregate traffic flow over the exchange switch available to the public.
  21. Participants shall endeavor to provide advance notice via email to each of their BGP peers, in the event that a service disruption or discontinuity of BGP peering can be foreseen.

For clarification:

  1. ISPs should advertise all their networks to the IXP.
  2. ISPs must not offer or sell transit traffic (Internet access) over the exchange medium. (Routers at the Exchange Point can be connected by other media than the exchange switch)
  3. ISPs should not use multiple links to the IXP for the purpose of routing their internal traffic.
  4. ISPs should accept all routes advertised by all other peers and route traffic through the Exchange (the purpose of it).

for more info, please contact us:

TISPA
PO Box 80449
Dar es Salaam
Tanzania

WWW: http://tix.or.tz/
Email: info@tix.or.tz