Can an IXP sell traffic?
This is a rhetorical question.
I know that it can... In fact, it is obvious that it can.

It is quite common to see several companies buying and selling traffic through IXPs.
But whenever I have been involved with more serious companies, it was common for this type of traffic to be over a Bilateral VLAN between the Downstream and Upstream, and the ASs involved were from the operations themselves (different from the ASN used by Route-Servers).

But I have seen a reasonably large scenario in which the IXP operator, maintaining the MLPA LAN with the pair of Route-Servers, adds another participant with the SAME ASN as the route-servers, and through this participant starts to sell traffic.

This seemed very strange to me!
And that is why I came to ask if this is correct or not.
I would appreciate any guidance on the subject.

In fact, there were other aggravating factors that worried me:
- The IXP activation information itself (VLAN, IPv4/IPv6, Route-Servers, etc.) was indistinguishable from the information in the transit BGP session. And the extra Billing information for anything sent by the transit was not explicit.
- The routes reported exchanged by this transit had the ASN transparency function in the AS-Path.

Thanks in advance!

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Douglas Fernando Fischer
Engº de Controle e Automação