Skip to main content

Action 4: Facilitate Communication and Coordination

The IXP facilitates communication among members by ensuring that the IXP and every member has at least one valid and active email address (to which replies can be expected within 72 hours) and telephone number that can be used for operational, security, and abuse incidents. Effective communication among members of an IXP is essential in mitigating network incidents such as misconfigurations, outages, or DoS attacks.

The IXP should maintain mailing lists or other means of communication, and a member directory available to all members of the exchange. Maintaining up-to-date contact information plays a crucial role in facilitating global operational communication and coordination.

The IXP should also check that every new member has up-to-date contact information entered and maintained in the appropriate RIR (or NIR) database and/or in PeeringDB. It is strongly recommended that contact information is made publicly available, but at a minimum should be available to other network operators registered with PeeringDB.

4-1 Internal Communication​

Facilitating proper internal communication is important so that the IXP membership can know who to contact and how. Here are few recommendations for mailing lists to maintain:

  • Peering mailing list Facilitates communication between various individuals from the members who are directly involved with peering.

  • Technical mailing list Allows IXP members to reach the technical team managing the IXP.

  • Members mailing list Facilitates IXP members to reach each other and also to allow for the team managing the IXP to easily send broadcast messages to all members.

4-2 External Communication​

Publishing contact information on appropriate public fora allows external parties to contact the IXP, which allows potential new members to reach the right people at the IXP or external parties to alert the right people at the IXP on issues related to the IXP's operation.

Here are few recommendations on public facing fora to consider:

  • PeeringDB PeeringDB is a freely available, user-maintained database of networks, and the go-to location for interconnection data. The database facilitates the global interconnection of networks at Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), data centers, and other interconnection facilities, and is the first stop in making interconnection decisions. It is vital that active IXPs maintain current contact data at PeeringDB.

  • IXP's own website An IXP's website should have easy to find contact information for those outside the IXP to use.

  • RIR Whois The IXP will obtain IP addresses from the regional RIR. Maintaining accurate and current data at the RIR is crucial to allow external parties to alert the IXP in the event of abuse of the IP addresses.