• October 25th 2021, HolistIX: a zero-touch approach for IXPs was presented at 2021 17th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM)
• July 14th - 16th 2021, PIX-IE had introduced in the IIJ virtual booth at JANOG48

The DIX-IE/NSPIXP project has been researching and developing the Programmable Internet eXchange in Edo (PIX-IE) to explore the possibility of a new Internet eXchange (IX) built with Software Defined Networking (SDN). PIX-IE aims to provide added value to IX by using Intend Based Networking (IBN) with SDN. PIX-IE started its pre-operation on DIX-IE in 2015. Based on the knowledge gained from this pre-operation, the migration from DIX-IE to PIX-IE will be carried out in 2021.

PIX-IE builds on SDN and incorporates IBN through HolistiIX which translates operator intentions down to network policies. PIX-IE consists of a set of OpenFlow enabled switches that IX operators configure via HolistIX. HolistIX extends IXP Manager and consists of the following key components:

• Plan and configure networks via diagramming (Miru)
• Verify network configurations through emulation (Athos)
• Deploying the configuration to the network (Cerberus)

By using OpenFlow switches, we get fine-grained control of traffic over the network. These switches are configured based on the Umbrella concept.

PIX-IE mitigates BUM traffic by taking a proactive approach to network configuration, only allowing traffic to approved member connections. Through fine-grained flow control between configured ASes, broadcast traffic is changed to unicast traffic and unknown unicast and multicast packets, not needed for peering at the IX, are discarded. This avoids IX failures and reduces bandwidth wasted caused by unwanted traffic.

We plan to provide the following functions in the future.

• WEB interface

The AS administrator can view the connection status and traffic graph of his / her organization.

• L3-IX (Adding a Root server managed by IXP Manager)

Uses the WEB interface to connect and control their BGP peering policies.

• KDDI Otemachi

provided interface:10G-LR / SR, 1G-LX / SX, 1G-T

• NTT Communications Otemachi

provided interface:10G-LR / SR, 1G-LX / SX, 1G-T

• NTT DATA Otemachi

provided interface:10G-LR / SR, 1G-LX / SX, 1G-T

If your organization is interested in participating in PIX-IE, please contact the DIX-IE/NSPIXP project (ixp-ops AT wide.ad.jp).

PIX-IE will be provided and operated as a demonstration experiment with a focus on technology verification. Therefore, the following points are different from a commercial IX service. We would like to ask you for your understanding regarding this.

• Best-effort service provision.
• 24x7 support will not be provided.
• Experiments are subject to failures and line breaks.

Every effort will be made to avoid disruptions in operation. However, due to the nature of the experiment, it is possible that there may be insufficient capacity or dropped connections.

• WIDE Project NSPIXP / PIX-IE (Sekiya, Okada)
• mail : ixp-ops AT wide.ad.jp