[1st-mile-nm] IXNM End of an Era, death due to stupid politics.

[John Brown]

Today, as the last person standing, I decided to shut down the Internet Exchange here in NM.  IXNM.
10+ years ago these 4 forward thinkers , Dave Cates, Mike Spinn, John Brown, and Tularosa Internet, built IXNM with the following goals in mind:

1. Neutral Peering for any and all.  Anyone could peer with IXNM.
2. A Coop-like transit service for service providers (end users couldn't by transit, only ISP or similar).  Thus aggregating demand and reducing bandwidth costs.

It was manged by those that participated, not a single person.

The IX took bandwidth costs from hundreds of dollars per Mb/s into the low 20's for its ISP participants.  Scale of economies worked.

Over the years attempts where made to bring on additional peers.  Some would only join(read SWCP) if someone else joined. Others wouldn't join (Read LOBO.NET, ENMR), even though the fiber was right out side there door and it was FREE to connect to.

Others (read UNM) thought about connecting but didn't want to pay for the cross-connect, so IXNM built a fiber cross connect to their room, optics was plugged in, interfaces brought up, but then politics and personal agenda's got in the way.  They (read UNM) wanted to CHARGE money for the connection, even though it was proven that they would BENEFIT by having better connectivity to private-sector, and it was FREE.  At one point a 1 day connection was established (UNM was forced into it) and over 100Mb/s worth of traffic was SENT TO UNM. Just imagine what that would have done to their BILL for transit.  Probably SAVED them money.

Then they (read UNM) decided that there was an issue with procurement.  Which was interesting since NMSU, Admin of the Courts, City of ABQ all connected without any worries, years ago and have been connected since.

Others like APS, didn't see any value in making network connectivity better, or in reducing their expenses.  As one person said "We are happy with our current service and don't need to make any changes."

State of NM DoIT said they couldn't afford it.  Yet it would have been FREE to them via the TIWA building.  Imagine if you could get to/from State web sites without having to leave the state.......

Others like 360Networks, Akamai, Global Crossing, Oso Grande, Taos Net, INET-of-NM, Spinn-Net, Tularosa Telecom, Team CYMRU, AS 112 , RMIX (Rocky Mountain Internet Exchange in Denver), and others all connected.

IXNM was the first to have IPv6 peering and address space available.  2002
IXNM was the first to have IP Multi-Cast peering (great for video over the top, etc)  2001

IXNM made the net better for places like Taos via Taos.net (THANK YOU to Taos Net for years of support), Clovis (I-Net of NM), Alamagordo and Albuquerque.

People in NM wonder why our connectivity sucks here.  Much of it has to do with the petty politics of the people that run those networks.

In almost every place an IX has been built and has gained traction, it has significantly enhanced the economy of the region.
One city in the Pacific North West made it a requirement of the cable company franchise that they had to peer at the local IX.  Poof, traffic in that community was mucho better.

So today we can continue to route our packets in and out of the state, just to go across the street.

For example, from my desktop to CABQ.GOV web site, its 14 hops though 7 cities OUTSIDE of New Mexico.  Before the IX was shut down it was  4 hops all within Albuquerque.

As the router gets unplugged, we see that the traffic through the network today peeked at 72.69Mb/s IN and 62.26Mb/s OUT, with an average of 39.68 Mb/s IN and 27.06Mb/s OUT.  That was pretty much its daily flow and cycle.

The economics don't exist to keep this running.


Signing off,
IXNM Inc., New Mexico's Neutral Exchange Point.

The views expressed here are the personal opinion of IXNM,Inc.



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