I just gave a presentation at TEIN2 meeting on SingAREN GIX. SingAREN GIX is a new Gigabit Internet Exchange we are building for the Advance Research and Education Network (AREN) community in Singapore. It is meant to be a carrier-neutral, open exchange for any research organizations (including commercial) and also provides optional Internet2 transit.

One of the main driver for GIX is to merged the SingAREN and Singapore National GRID Pilot Platform (NGPP) infrastructure. It is also time to redesign the architect since the last time we look at it seriously is in 1997.But more importantly, it is an attempt to solve something that has been bugging me for many years. If we examine the submarine cable infrastructure in this part of the world, Singapore has most cable system (~27Tbps). If you are providing network connectivity between Europe and Asia or Australia, you are very likely to go through Singapore somehow.

Unfortunately, while your cable system may physically go through Singapore, it’s not seen at the logical or IP layer. That’s the main problem we witness with the original TEIN project between France and Korea; that Singapore has to purchase another IPLC to Korea to connect to TEIN even though the traffic goes through us.

So one of the main component of the GIX is the provision of a STM-4 or STM-16 to the submarine landing stations in Singapore such that International AREN traffic that goes through Singapore could also drop off at this new GIX to do IP peering. This would not only benefit Singapore but also Asia Pacific AREN community as traffic between Asia and Europe began to take off.

In the long run, we need to get the submarine landing to start talking IP. :-)

Note: Submarine Network Diagram courtesy of Asia NetCom.