Western Australian Internet Exchange
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The Western Australian Internet Exchange (WAIX) was formed in 1997 as a neutral Internet Exchange Point in Perth, Australia. Its three founding members were iiNet, Omen Internet and Wantree Internet. Today WAIX has over 50 peers and facilitates the transfer of over a gigabit per second.
The exchange is a project of the Western Australian Internet Association which acts as the corporate patron of the project, although the facility is self-funded on a not-for-profit basis through modest access fees. WAIX is the longest running exchange point in Australia.
The facility is located in the QV.1 building in central Perth, and most Western Australian ISPs peer at the facility. The exchange has a compulsory Multi-Lateral Peering Agreement MLPA, however bi-lateral interconnection at the facility is welcome in addition to the MLPA.
[edit] Brief History
The peering fabric first existed informally as links between "Wantree Internet" and "Omen Internet" to iiNet. WAIX formalised as an initiative by the Western Australian Internet Association after a presentation by Andrew Khoo on his similar work in Sydney and Melbourne to create multi-lateral peering fabrics in both cities. The ISPs at the presentation later agreed they could form the fabric themselves and did so by purchasing a small room in "QV.1" and began as a formal peering exchange after Omen, iiNet and Wantree moved their interconnects into the peering room.
WAIX was linked to the other Perth peering exchange at the time - the "Paradox Internet Exchange" run by Paradox Digital - allowing ISPs who connected at either peering fabric to exchange traffic. PIX was wrapped up with the sale of Paradox Digital (date needed.)
The original BGP route exchange was done through an iiNet border router but this presented some technical difficulties (for example, peering at WAIX and buying transit from iiNet made for some rather interesting routing.) Subsequently, the first WAIX route server was a Cisco 2500-series router donated by a peer at the time (Omen Internet).
Various attempts were made over the first few years to arrange traffic exchange between peers at WAIX and peers at other Australian internet exchanges (notably the "South Australia Internet Exchange", or SAIX) allowing peers to pay for interstate traffic. This was an arrangement with one of the peers at the time (information needed) who peered at more than one Australian peering fabric. Similar arrangements were formalised in the eastern states with the formation of AusBone.
