Actually there are a few not-for-profit peering points in Australia. I am the Technical Manager of WAIX (West Australian Internet eXchange) and we are the largest public IX in Australia (by number of participants AND amount of data exchanged) and we are non-profit. WAIX (www.waia.asn.au/waix) is run by the WA Internet Association (www.waia.asn.au), a non profit association for the Internet community in WA. The South Australian Internet Association runs SAIX (www.saia.asn.au), a smaller not for profit exchange in Adelaide, SA. Ausbone (www.ausbone.net) is also non-profit and has points in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
There is now also a new company running peering points in a few states, Pipe Networks (www.pipenetworks.com) are present in Brisbane, Adelaide and Sydney iirc - however they are not run on a non-profit basis but are proving to be fairly popular.
Over here at WAIX we have *every* ISP in WA peered either directly or via another participant with the exception of Telstra, Primus and Worldcom. Our large peers include the likes of iiNet/Eftel/Westnet who are by far the largest three ISPs in WA, the entire WA Government, all WA Universities, Singapore Telecom (and Optus via Singtel), Comindico, Connect.com.au, Pacific Internet, Netspace and Swiftel. (Complete list at http://mrtg.waia.asn.au/mrtg)
So I guess in short, no we do not need more exchanges - we can work with what we have now, but we do need pressure applied to the large national backbones to force them into peering - how they could possibly justify not peering with WAIX with its massive number of peers I don't see.
As a side not we (WAIX) are attending an industry forum on Internet Interconnection this week in Sydney to discuss peering matters with the various telcos and large ISPs, all substantially large ISPs in.au have been invited, as have the major exchanges. Interesting enough this meeting was instigated by Telstra via ACIF (The Australian Communications Industry Forum) prior to this announcement from the ACCC, so I think its fair to assume Telstra is aware that they are going to have to take a bit of a more serious look at peering - or at least look as if they are interested!
Also worth a mention is that we do not expect the major backbones to peer their entire network, strictly speaking we require people to peer what is financially viable for them - for some peers (Comindico & Singtel for example) actually do make their entire networks visible to the exchange, but we would be more than happy with a WA-only Telstra peer with WAIX, and I'm sure SAIX would be happy with a SA-Only telstra connection.
Gavin
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EEk, sorry about the lack of formating - didnt realise I had the html formatting option on.
Gav
Actually there are a few not-for-profit peering points in Australia. I am the Technical Manager of WAIX (West Australian Internet eXchange) and we are the largest public IX in Australia (by number of participants AND amount of data exchanged) and we are non-profit. WAIX (www.waia.asn.au/waix) is run by the WA Internet Association (www.waia.asn.au), a non profit association for the Internet community in WA. The South Australian Internet Association runs SAIX (www.saia.asn.au), a smaller not for profit exchange in Adelaide, SA. Ausbone (www.ausbone.net) is also non-profit and has points in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. There is now also a new company running peering points in a few states, Pipe Networks (www.pipenetworks.com) are present in Brisbane, Adelaide and Sydney iirc - however they are not run on a non-profit basis but are proving to be fairly popular. Over here at WAIX we have *every* ISP in WA peered either directly or via another participant with the exception of Telstra, Primus and Worldcom. Our large peers include the likes of iiNet/Eftel/Westnet who are by far the largest three ISPs in WA, the entire WA Government, all WA Universities, Singapore Telecom (and Optus via Singtel), Comindico, Connect.com.au, Pacific Internet, Netspace and Swiftel. (Complete list at http://mrtg.waia.asn.au/mrtg) So I guess in short, no we do not need more exchanges - we can work with what we have now, but we do need pressure applied to the large national backbones to force them into peering - how they could possibly justify not peering with WAIX with its massive number of peers I don't see. As a side not we (WAIX) are attending an industry forum on Internet Interconnection this week in Sydney to discuss peering matters with the various telcos and large ISPs, all substantially large ISPs in .au have been invited, as have the major exchanges. Interesting enough this meeting was instigated by Telstra via ACIF (The Australian Communications Industry Forum) prior to this announcement from the ACCC, so I think its fair to assume Telstra is aware that they are going to have to take a bit of a more serious look at peering - or at least look as if they are interested!
Also worth a mention is that we do not expect the major backbones to peer their entire network, strictly speaking we require people to peer what is financially viable for them - for some peers (Comindico & Singtel for example) actually do make their entire networks visible to the exchange, but we would be more than happy with a WA-only Telstra peer with WAIX, and I'm sure SAIX would be happy with a SA-Only telstra connection.
Gavin