At the latest Euro-IX forum, TOP-IX presented a proposal to federate the Fabrics of geographically separated IXP’s. The proposal takes shape following the positive results generated by the experimentation of federating Internet Exchanges and Cloud Providers, as an enabling technology for extending cloud resources across different administrative domains.
The idea has garnered a lot of attention as it would allow individual IXP’s to offer their local members services available on a European and beyond scale. Furthermore, the solution presents an alternative to proprietary solutions, mitigating the effects of economic and technological lock-in.
The proposal aims to implement the concept of a Service Composer, which would allow users, accessing from one IXP’s service portal, to access and benefit from services in another separate but appropriately interconnected IXP.
The initial entities involved alongside TOP-IX are AMS-IX, DE-CIX, and LINX, with the goal of opening up to as many IXP’s as possible. If you are interested in receiving more information, you can write to staff@top-ix.org.
