As some may know Init7 decided to leave SwissIX at the end of 2018 mainly to protest against the recent policy of the not-for-profit SwissIX association.
A decade ago SwissIX was completely volunteer driven, offering peering infrastructure for no recurring fee. This had changed over time and ended in an very high fee for a 10gig port of CHF 750 per month (including a 2nd port for redundancy), which is a lot of money, comparing other exchanges with similar size and structure such as LONAP and considering current hardware pricing.
As a matter of fact, SwissIX ports were twice as expensive as the commercial internet exchange of Equinix in Zürich.
This resulted in accumulation of cash on SwissIX bank account, as well as rather high consulting fees paid to people which apparently abandoned the community volunteering idea of the association.
For more details please refer to http://lists.swinog.ch/public/swinog/2018-December/007105.html
What happend since then:
The SwissIX board reconsidered their price policy quicker than expected and lowered port prices to a reasonable level with effect of beginning of 2019. After all Init7's protest leave was for good, as everybody has to pay less ... you may show your gratitude by sending a 10pack of your favorite beer to Winterthur - delivery address in the footer ;-)
Init7 is now back and currently reconnecting with two redundant 10gig: in the recently established site of green.ch in Lupfig, along with e-shelter in Rümlang. The connections should be ready in a few days, as we are waiting for cross connect delivery.
A few words about our peering policy - please consider before sending a request:
1. Init7 AS13030 is not peering with SwissIX Route Servers
2. Init7 is not peering with transit customers or customer customers
3. Init7 expects you to setup 4 BGP sessions (v4, v6 to each router) without MD5
4. Init7 expects you to have an up-to-date PeeringDB record
5. Any peering request should be sent to peering at init7 dot net exclusively
6. If there is more traffic than a few hundred Mbps, Init7 expects you to setup at least one preferred PNI in any common location to offload traffic and dependency from public infrastructure
7. Init7 expects you to send beer - ehm no
So here we are again, because peering matters.
Happy peering!
Fredy on behalf of Init7, SwissIX President 2004 - 2009