Sorry to sound nasty in some of the following, but every answer to date has been so wrong, or wrong-headed. Note that I am not in any way unbiased here. I built and operate L2IX, mentioned below, and operate the largest ISP (2 million dialup, 8000 leased lines, 85% of colo content, US $200 million 1999 revenue) in Korea (and, perhaps, the largest in Asia-Pacific). Of course any exchange in Korea will be primarily a "domestic" exchange. WTF else could it be? That is where the traffic is. Since there is such a huge disparity between the cost of domestic connectivity and international connectivity, it makes sense for domestic players to exchange traffic amongst their domestic networks. Also, since Korea is a unique language country, the overwhelming majority of the traffic is domestic. Only about 10% of my traffic is exchanged with the US. There are two foreign ISPs active in Korea, PSINet (which bought the Korean ISP INET last year) and AUNet. PSINet has its own international connectivity, and AUNet buys theirs from Korea domestic resellers. Neither of those players peers their international networks in Seoul, AUNet because it is impossible given their connectivity (they have no direct connectivity to other AUNet sites in Asia), and PSINet due to their US centric policy. Korea Telecom has their own domestic exchange service, but it operates at Layer 3 only, and any exchange between ISPs sees the KT AS hop in the path. This link is used by domestic ISPs primarily for connection to KT, not to each other. The only layer 2 exchange points in Korea are KINX and L2IX. KINX was formed by an assiciation of smaller ISPs, led by PSINet. The really large players (Dacom and KT) do not participate. The non commercial networks also have restrictions on participating. The exchange is located withing the computing center of the National Computerization Agency, and is operated by NCA. This, along with some of the association policies, creates concerns about the scalibility of the exchange. Current total traffic is ~400 Mbps. Dacom's L2IX is the largest (highest number of particiapnts, largest traffic exchanged) NAP, with most Korean ISPs participating. The total traffic throughput is now more than 2.0 Gbps. While KT does not participate directly, Dacom provides domestic transit to KT (via 445 Mbps direct private peering), and the non-commercial networks, at the exchange. The exchange is located in Dacom's main facility, but early next year will move to the Korea Internet Data Center (KIDC), a new 270,000 ft^2 (the size is not a typo) carrier neutral colocation facility which we have created in Seoul. International players are entirely welcome at KIDC/L2IX. Peering policies are entirely bilateal matters, left to direct negotiation between the participants. To peer with Dacom at this exchange, I require that the international participant peer its entire network, as I do. Now, saying that JPIX, NSPIXP2, STIX or HKIX are "international" exchanges, and KINX or L2IX are not, is misleading. STIX is international only in the sense that Singapore Telecom transits its international peering connections to the Singapore domestic ISPs which connect to STIX. JPIX and NSPIXP2 have some non-Japan participants, but they in general peer only their Japan domestic traffic. HKIX, as an academically controlled exchange, has serious scaling issues, and a multilateral peering requirement which is causing increasing trouble. Though UUNET participates there, what traffic do they exchange? Certainly not 701. How about their OzEmail subsidiary? One needs to be very, very careful when characterizing the nature of exchanges, since there are many different parameters of operation for those who operate outside of the US, and currently pay the full cost of connecting to the US. Peering policies at thesed exchanges might have a significant effect on US traffic, particularly in English-centric, small markets like Singapore and Hong Kong, where the majority of the traffic is international. US based Internet players, in general, pay nothing for international connectivity, and are very cautious to not change this, even when they do participate in some low level at an "international" exchange. There are only a couple of examples of US ISPs (AboveNet and Concentric, that I know of), which peer their entire network at some exchange, mostly LINX. Most others (who even have an international presence) separate their networks in US, Europe, and Asia portions, and many add country specific breakdown. Only in the US do they peer the entire network. Elsewhere, it is always a subset, with the local ISP still paying the costs of international trasit to the US customers of the big ISP. IMNSHO, these local ISPs are fools to peer with big US ISPs under these terms. Additionally, local exchanges tend to be loaded with local competitive issues. Local ISPs see their major competitors as other local ISPs, and thus use peering policy and capacity to engineer competitive and/or political policy. This should be more than familiar to all of the US based readers of NANOG. -jem John Milburn jem@xpat.com, jem@bora.net Managing Director Internet Technology Division Cell +82 19-220-7035 Tel +82 22-220-7035 Dacom Corporation, Seoul, Korea Fax +82 22-220-7429 bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com writes:
:| I think there's also one in Seoul called KIX as well, but I'm not entirely :| sure.
Yes, KIX is in Seoul but I think it is domestic IX. In Japan as well there is no IXes which can be called international one.
As I understand, KIX is mostly domestic Korea. Japan has NSPIX3 and JPIX. There is enough international capacity to house a root server there. :)
And based on what I have been told, both HKIX and STIX can be called international. There is a common error in assuming international = US domestic.
This is false.
Both STIX & HKIX have interconnections to ISPs in many other nations but not quite the connectivity back to the US.