On 9/5/13 1:47 PM, Theo de Raadt wrote:
The last six months in AlbertaIX saw no discussions (or approval) for any action plan. Without votes, nothing can be built.
This is probably the key ideological problem and a good example not to follow if you are trying to start an exchange. Do first, implement bureaucracy later, if at all. I completely respect the people that were on the board and also Cybera. FWIW, I have no direct insight into the conversations between the people involved. From a distance it seemed like exactly the right people to be involved (with only the minor problem of not enough ethernet switch pluggin' in and too much meetin' and discussin'). Facility and parties willing, hopefully there will be a YYCIX switch in Cybera.
The entire organization also lacks documents. The new game plan is to follow YYCIX because of Hurricane Electric's arrival at the datacenter which was (originally) the least preffered.
Our criteria for choosing a facility in Calgary was: * Which facilities have a live ethernet switch for any Internet exchange? Then given the candidate list of data centers in the area: * Is there a live ethernet switch in their facility? * How many IPs are pingable on that switch? * Does the facility want us in their facility? (Is there any value for them? Are they happy to have us build in?) * Does the facility want the exchange to succeed? (Do they get it?) (Sadly sometimes the answer here is either indifference or hostility.) * Does the facility understand that we need them to encourage more networks to build into their facility? * Is the price for cross connects and power reasonable? * How many networks are in the building? * Can we get develop enough revenue to cover our costs to get circuits, colo, power, cross connects etc to build out to the site? (DataHive met all of these requirements and was repeatedly very helpful to make things happen.) There's a magic moment in the beginning of forming data center neutral exchanges where the engineers operating the exchange and the facility owners need to have a meeting of the minds and view the exchange as something they are doing together and then take the immediate actions to get it live. I'm not sure how the magic of this goes down since the facility owners may or may not view each other as competitors (and may or may not view the exchange as that useful). Once an exchange has critical mass like AMS-IX I suppose this becomes an easy decision for a new facility owner. I am led to understand that there is city fiber in Calgary available at reasonable cost, which hopefully would translate to exchange switches in multiple buildings eventually in Calgary (if various stages of critical mass are achieved). Mike.