CANARIE Peering Exchange

CANARIE Peering Exchange
Name	CANARIE Peering Exchange
Type	Non-profit network exchange
Industry	Internet exchange point
Founded	2000s
Location	Canada
Area served	Canada

CANARIE Peering Exchange is a Canadian network exchange platform that facilitates traffic exchange among research, education, and commercial networks, linking institutions such as University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, McGill University, Simon Fraser University, and University of Alberta. It interconnects with regional and national initiatives including CIRA, TERENA, Internet2, GEANT, and Equinix while supporting international research collaborations with CERN, NASA, NSF, European Organization for Nuclear Research, and ESnet. The exchange enables high-performance data transfer for projects tied to Canada Foundation for Innovation, SSHRC, NSERC, Mitacs, and CRC funding streams.

Overview

The CANARIE Peering Exchange operates as an Internet exchange point similar in function to LINX, DE-CIX, AMS-IX, IX.br, and JPNAP, providing peering fabrics, route servers, and traffic statistics for participants from universities, colleges, research hospitals, provincial networks, and commercial carriers like Bell Canada, Telus, Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications, and Cogeco. It supports interoperability with protocols and projects including Border Gateway Protocol, Multiprotocol Label Switching, Virtual Local Area Network, Network Time Protocol, and Simple Network Management Protocol, and coordinates with standards bodies such as IETF, IEEE, IAB, ITU, and W3C.

History and Development

Origins trace to collaborative initiatives among Canadian research networks inspired by organizations like CANARIE Inc., CA*net, NetNorth, SURFnet, JANET, and AARNet, reflecting lessons from exchanges including Amsterdam Internet Exchange and London Internet Exchange. Early milestones include deployments coincident with projects funded by Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and infrastructure investments related to CAnet4 and CAnet5, and collaborations with regional exchanges like BCIX and IXWEST influenced by events such as Supercomputing Conference, GPN Conference, and Peering Forum workshops. Expansion phases matched growth in research data needs for initiatives like Square Kilometre Array, Large Hadron Collider, Human Genome Project, and Ocean Networks Canada collaborations.

Infrastructure and Architecture

The exchange uses carrier-neutral facilities and equipment from vendors common to installations at Equinix TY3, Cologix, Interxion, CyrusOne, and Digital Realty, with switching platforms and chassis interoperable with products from Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Arista Networks, Brocade', and Huawei Technologies. Redundant fabrics implement high-capacity links via 100 Gigabit Ethernet, 40 Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and emerging 400 Gigabit Ethernet technologies, with optical transport using DWDM systems, transponders, and fiber assets tied to regional carriers like Rogers Communications, Telus, and BCE Inc.. Route server architecture leverages communities and policies compliant with Route Origin Authorisation, Resource Public Key Infrastructure, MANRS, and peering best practices developed at PeeringDB, IETF Working Group, and Internet Society initiatives.

Membership and Connectivity

Members include a mix of academic institutions such as McMaster University, Université de Montréal, Queen's University, Dalhousie University, and University of Calgary; regional research and education networks like CA*net4, BCNET, ORION, ACRN, and HEPNET; commercial carriers including TELUS International, Cogeco Peer 1, Bell MTS, and global cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Cloud. Connectivity options range from private peering, public peering via route servers, to hosted interconnections supporting virtual network functions for projects with Compute Canada, Canarie Research Cloud, IRIS, and CANARIE National Research Platform participants.

Services and Operations

Operational services include peering fabrics, route server operation, traffic statistics, DDoS mitigation interconnects, multicast support for collaborations with CBC/Radio-Canada media projects and research data transfers for Genome Canada and Analyze the Future initiatives. NOC functions coordinate maintenance windows and incident response aligned with practices from CERT/CC, FIRST, CIRA DNS Shield, and CCRTS frameworks, while monitoring uses tools from Nagios, Prometheus, Zabbix, and Grafana integrated with flow telemetry standards like NetFlow, sFlow, and IPFIX.

Governance and Funding

Governance is typically overseen by stakeholder boards and advisory committees drawing expertise from institutions such as CANARIE Inc., Universities Canada, CIRA, CIPPIC, and provincial agencies, with policy input informed by CRTC regulatory frameworks, federal procurement norms exemplified by Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, and privacy guidance from Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Funding models combine membership fees, infrastructure grants from Canada Foundation for Innovation and provincial innovation funds, collaborative cost-sharing with carriers and cloud providers, and project-specific support from agencies like NSERC, SSHRC, CIHR, and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.

Category:Internet exchange points