IX-API Drives Innovation in Internet Exchange Standards with Major Advances in 2023

In a landmark year of growth and evolution, the IX-API initiative, a leading player in the internet exchange landscape, has successfully propelled the standard forward through significant developments and collaborations. The year 2023 has seen groundbreaking enhancements in the specification, notable progress in open-source implementations, and increased interest from both existing and new implementors.

Evolution in Specification:

The standout achievement in 2023 is the major expansion of the specification to include, for the first time, an extension to layer 3. This extension encompasses routing functions and BGP configuration for Cloud services, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of the standard. Additionally, a new proposed and approved specification for peers’ statistics and the sharing of remaining available capacity among peers has been introduced. Notably, DE-CIX’s proprietary extension to the specification for Cloud Router has been accepted into the core specification, highlighting the collaborative and inclusive nature of the IX-API community.

Progress in Open Source Implementation and Deployment:

IX-API has demonstrated its commitment to open-source initiatives, making strides in the development and deployment of the standard:

1. A Terraform provider, now the de facto standard in infrastructure as code, has been successfully developed with over 1000 downloads this year. The provider is accessible on the official Terraform Registry , providing a seamless experience for infrastructure management.
2. The Peering Manager , a widely used tool in the internet exchange ecosystem, has fully integrated IX-API. A dedicated open-source IX-API client in Python, pyixapi, has been developed for Peering Manager, allowing users to remotely manage peering services at any participating IXP. The recently released Peering Manager v1.8 features this client, bringing enhanced capabilities to the community.
3. The network statistics feature introduced in version 2.4 of the specification is no longer theoretical; it has been successfully implemented and released by LINX, further validating the practical impact of IX-API’s standards.

Diverse Implementors and New Entrants:

IX-API continues to foster a diverse ecosystem with contributions from existing implementors and the addition of new players in the field. Besides the well-known existing implementations of AMS-IX, DE-CIX, LINX and Digital Realty (Interxion Cloud Connect, SEE-CIX and Terraco Africa Cloud Exchange), we see new players in the arena, foremost JP-NAP and France-IX, showing interest and willing contribute.

The inclusion of new implementors reflects the growing interest and recognition of the value that IX-API brings to the internet exchange landscape.

Statements from Industry Leaders:

Ruben van den Brink, CTO of AMS-IX: “If you are considering to thoroughly automate your interconnectivity services or if you run an IX that wants to play a role in the future, software driven architecture of the digital landscape, then this is the time to dive into IX-API. Let 2024 be the big year of adoption! "

Marcos Sanz Grossón, Head of Global Software at DE-CIX: “The acceptance of DE-CIX’s proprietary extension into the core specification underscores the collaborative spirit of IX-API. These developments in 2023 reinforce the importance of adaptability and innovation in internet exchange standards. DE-CIX is proud to be part of this transformative journey, and we are committed to contributing further to the success of IX-API.”

Richard Petrie, CTO of LINX: “The implementation and release of the network statistics feature by LINX mark a tangible step forward for IX-API’s standards. It is gratifying to see theoretical advancements materialize into practical solutions. LINX remains dedicated to the collaborative spirit of IX-API, and we anticipate these developments will foster a more robust and efficient internet exchange ecosystem.”

About IX-API:

IX-API is at the forefront of shaping the future of internet exchange standards, facilitating seamless communication and collaboration among diverse stakeholders in the digital ecosystem. With a commitment to openness, innovation, and inclusivity, IX-API continues to drive advancements that empower the internet exchange community. For more information, visit www.ix-api.net .

Internet Exchange leaders add statistics to IX-API standard

The IX-API development team has added some new key features, most notably statistics, to the IX-API standard, giving users of the API even more added value.

The new statistics feature gives users of the API insights on the amount of traffic that is exchanged via their connection. Moreover, the API access to statistics information enables customers to include it in their own management dashboards. On top, the statistics feature gives customers insights in the performance and efficiency of their connection, which in turn helps with capacity planning and routing design.

Next to statistics, the IX-API team is also working on the interoperability of IX-API. Earlier this year, the open source project Peering Manager added support for version 2 of the IX-API extending this way its functionality for users to be able to peek in realtime into their IX resources. Also in the arena of Infrastructure as Code the IX-API is getting traction: a so-called “provider” is being implemented for Terraform, the top-dog of the open source IaC tools. With it, Terraform users will be able to create declaratively resources at their IXPs in the same way they create any other cloud resources, without having even to learn IX-API specifics.

In order, to stimulate wider adoption of the API by other IXP’s, the IX-API team also made deployment of the API easier. Discovery mechanisms allow implementers to build parts of the standard that are relevant to their business and announce them, without having to build every single end-point. All three exchanges will start implementing these new features in the IX-API in Q1 2023.

Ruben van den Brink, CTO of AMS-IX: “Observability is important, because succesful operation of any network requires insight in its performance metrics. Getting information about your IXP connection through an API may contribute e.g. to automated decision making.”

Marcos Sanz Grossón, Head of Global Software at DE-CIX adds: “We are excited about any customer being able to take advantage of reading statistics and telemetry data live from their IXP. And these features of the API, which start with version 2.4, are an add-on that do not require them to implement the rest of the API.”

Richard Petrie, CTO of LINX: “This release marks a very significant stage in the evolution of the IX-API. With statistics, we expect many more customer to start to adopt the standard API and with the modular implementation structure it will provide a quicker and simpler route to adoption for the wider IX community.”

IX-Talks podcast with the IX-API development team Marcos Sanz (DE-CIX), Steven Bakker (AMS-IX) and Richard Petrie (LINX)

The IX-API development crew had the pleasure of being interviewed by Bijal Sanghani for the second episode of IX Talks, a podcast serie produced by Euro-IX and AMS-IX that features key developments in the industry. Richard , Steven and Marcos had a chance to inform the community on the progress of the project, the development of IX-API ecosystem and the IX-API roadmap going forward in 2023.

You can find the podcast here

IX-API Gains Momentum as Partners Build IX-API Ecosystem

Last month, the IX-API founders DE-CIX , AMS-IX and LINX organised a virtual consultation workshop for other global IXPs, member networks and customers. The session was a success and created a positive platform to share ideas, answer queries and as a working group, to take improvement recommendations away to work on.

In 2019, the world’s leading Internet Exchange Point (IXP) operators AMS-IX (Amsterdam), DE-CIX (Frankfurt) and LINX (London), launched version 1 of the IX-API, a universal application-programming interface. This was a revolutionary collaboration for the IXPs, with the API being a first of its kind for the industry. The IX-API was initially adopted and utilised by the founders and a small handful of their common partners.

Version 2.1 was released this summer with the clear principle to drive wider adoption, and to benefit all types of IXPs, customers and members. This version updated schemas and the product offerings catalogue while at the same time included support for port management (incl. LOA handling), service decommissioning and account deprovisioning.

The goal of the workshop in November was to get feedback from the community for new features for a version 3.0 of IX-API. In addition, the workshop was a great platform to update the wider community on progress of the project and the cause.

LINX’s CTO Richard Petrie reflected; “It is important that whist we build more functionality into the IX-API we maintain good documentation, ease of adoption and scalability in the model, so that other IXPs can benefit from the development work we have done and continue to do.”

The first adopters of the IX-API attended the workshop and shared their user stories. The outcome of this was valuable feedback that has now been captured and put into a specification document that will become a working project over the next few months.

DE-CIX CTO Thomas King stated; “Now we have developed the foundations, driving additional functionality that our customers need is the highest on our priority list. This is supporting cloud connectivity and making monitoring and statistics data available for customers. Additionally, we are supporting the integration of the IX-API in third party open-source tools such as Peering Manager.”

The discussion of wider adoption and the ease to deploy remains high priority. AMS-IX, DE-CIX and LINX already have other contributors to the IX-API discussion and model, through IXPs such as Netnod (Sweden) and IX.BR (Brazil) but they continue to look at how they can further support global IXPs of all sizes, to benefit from this project.

Ruben van den Brink, the AMS-IX CTO made this clear in his view on open standards; “As we drive development at AMS-IX and the other IXs we look to progressively share our experience, development models and tooling in an open and standards-based way so we can foster greater community benefit and trust in the IX-API in the long term”.

Most large global networks connect to anything from 10, 20 to 30 or more Internet Exchange Points around the world. The founders realise that they need a model and a solution that can be readily adopted so the customer experience is seamless and efficient across each and all IXPs.

Independent development work is running in parallel with the open-source BGP session management solution, Peering Manager. This promises to provide open-source tools to enhance the peering process that will ultimately integrate with the IX-API.

On 30th November Peering Manager released version 1.5, which is now able to retrieve data from IX-API instances for IXPs. It displays data found in the remote IX-API that matches what Peering Manager knows about the IXP. Missing connections to an IXP, if found in IX-API can be setup with few clicks thanks to this feature.

All in all, work on IX-API is full steam ahead and confident that 2022 will bring wider adoption and further progress so stay tuned!

Global Internet Exchange Leaders Release Next Phase of Universal API

Enhanced IX API to include cloud connection capabilities, private VLAN and closed user groups

One year ago, the world’s leading Internet Exchange operators AMS-IX (Amsterdam), DE-CIX (Frankfurt) and LINX (London), launched a new universal application-programming interface, the IX-API. The large proportion of member, customer and partner crossover between all three exchanges provided the opportunity to work with and offer something to the community, making a new universal provisioning and configuration API a natural yet revolutionary collaboration between the three IXs.

The IX-API improves productivity and provisioning of services for their immediate customers, members, and the wider networking community to self-manage their existing and new interconnection services, such as peering, more effectively. During the virtual European Peering Forum (EPF) event in September, the release of version 2 was presented. The IX-API version 2 contains a number of new features including cloud connectivity capabilities, private VLANs and closed user groups. The IX-API version 2 specification and documentation is available now in the sandbox on https://ix-api.net/

Dr Thomas King, Chief Technology Officer at DE-CIX says, “DE-CIX implemented the DE-CIX API in September last year, right after IX-API version 1 was released. Many customers and especially peering resellers jumped at the chance, as IX-API version 1 mainly focused on the peering use case. With IX-API version 2, cloud connectivity is now also supported, and has already been implemented. The first customers are already using version 2 to automatically provision and configure dedicated cloud connectivity to cloud service providers such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and the Google Cloud platform. Customers can now programmatically set up and control not only peering services but also cloud connectivity to a large number of cloud service providers. This transforms the DE-CIX interconnection ecosystem into a software-defined Internet and Cloud Exchange.”

Richard Petrie, Chief Technology Officer for LINX adds: “For LINX and version 2 we are working to deliver this in parallel to our product offerings, as we enable cloud solutions through our portal and enhanced interconnection services this year. Developing a wider set of products and services for our members and partners is very much part of the LINX strategy and IX-API version 2 provides a programmable interface into our exchange platforms around the world. We also continue to promote adoption across the IX community, to help promote digital consumption of peering services in general.”

Henk Steenman, Chief Technology Officer for AMS-IX says: “Over the last months we continued working on the IX-API to further improve this service and make it easier for IX partners to interface with IXs in a standardized, automated way. This will significantly streamline the workflow of customers seeking to connect to an IX.”

Mutual connectivity and data centre partners Epsilon and Interxion were approached to trial the first phase of the IX-API and will continue to trial and support version 2 of the IX-API.

Further phases are being planned to include additional monitoring and statistical functions. Find out more about the IX-API collaboration project and live sandbox tools on this website: https://ix-api.net/

For the ‘Good of the Internet’

Global Internet Exchange Leaders Develop Universal API

The world’s leading Internet Exchange operators AMS-IX (Amsterdam), DE-CIX (Frankfurt) and LINX (London) have joined forces to develop a common Application Programming Interface (API) to provision and configure interconnection services. This so-called IX-API will improve productivity for their members, customers and partners alike. It allows users to self-manage their existing and new Interconnection services such as peering more effectively, from ordering new ports to monitoring provisioning processes.

The consortium of the three Internet Exchanges also called on common member and connectivity partner Epsilon (www.epsilontel.com ) and data centre partner Interxion (www.interxion.com ) to act as pilot customers for the new software. Both partners’ tests came out with positive results and they will be joining the exchanges at the European Peering Forum (EPF) taking place in September to present and demonstrate the tool to the rest of the Internet and telecommunications community.

Dr Thomas King, Chief Technology Officer at DE-CIX says; “DE-CIX ambition has always been to make customers life easier and connect them anywhere needed on the planet. Therefore, we are pleased to have come together with our partners to create this IX-API from scratch. We are convinced that this new industry standard will be adopted by other Internet Exchanges and interconnection providers.”

Richard Petrie, Chief Technology Officer for LINX adds; “Our software and engineering teams have collaborated, working hard to create this modern RESTful API based on OpenAPI Specification v3 for managing IXPs customers and services.”

Henk Steenman, Chief Technology Officer for AMS-IX says; “At AMS-IX, we are very proud that the three largest exchanges join forces, collaborate and have reached consensus to deliver the common IX-API project. In a very competitive market, we have found a common ambition and drive for the greater good of the internet.”

There is a large percentage of member and customer crossover between all three exchanges, working with the same remote peering partners and data centres. Being able to work with and offer out to the community, a universal API tool is a huge step forward for the industry.

AMS-IX, DE-CIX and LINX are part of the European Peering Forum (EPF) and aim to be unveiling the new project, in its completion, to their industry peers at EPF14 this September in Tallinn, Estonia.