Interconnection services offered to consortium members by TOP-IX are designed to allow “peering agreements” to be implemented for the exchange of Internet traffic using BGP4 (IPv4) and BGP4+ (IPv6) protocols.
Unlike the standard concept of Internet Exchange (normally involving the setting up of one single location where access equipment is placed), the infrastructure offered by the Consortium to its members is geographically distributed over the territory.
Interaction between connecting bodies is performed directly without any technical or financial involvement by TOP-IX. The Consortium is solely responsible for providing the configurations required by interested members on the transmission structure.
TOP-IX encourages its members and partners to create and update PeeringDB records, in order to help automation in establishing bilateral peering sessions. Furthermore TOP-IX provides reliable and redundant Route Servers to establish multilateral peering sessions.
Link to the Access Node Map page >
The distributed infrastructure covers all the main towns in the Piedmont region in addition to the localities of Ivrea, Aosta, Pont Saint Martin and Milan. The aim is to aid broadband diffusion and therefore the development of each specific local area by bringing access to the service closer to persons and parties interested.
Distributed platform flexibility makes it possible to configure logically separate networks at Level 2, geared towards implementing public free peering agreements and set up in such a way so as to exclude reciprocal transit and/or private peering agreements which are implemented on dedicated (private) VLANs where reciprocal visibility is only for parties interested in the agreement itself.
Partnership
Since 2008, thanks to an agreement between Rezopole and TOP-IX, it’s possible for TOP-IX members to implement peering agreement with the NAP of Lyon.
Since 2009, thanks to an agreement between VSIX and TOP-IX, it’s possible for TOP-IX members to implement peering agreement with the NAP of Padua.
Since 2012, thanks to an agreement between France-IX and TOP-IX, it’s possible for TOP-IX members to implement peering agreement with the NAP of Paris.
