Ok… Normally we do things on our own Jitsi server, but since we don’t really have a sense of how many folks will show up for this, we decided to do it on Zoom.

Or Zoom Meeting ID 861 3112 9506 and passcode 777245.

11pm Singapore, 4pm CET, 3pm UTC, 10am US east, 7am US west.

There was a question as to whether it will be recorded and whether it can be shared… Yes, everything PCH does is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license. I’ll try to make sure that we record and post the video.

We’ll try to cover the diversity of ways IXPs get started, governed, and grow, best-practices, and leave plenty of time for Q&A / discussion.

Jay’s original question, regarding how an IXP would interact with a rural community fiber network of 200 families in a 25km radius, provides a useful starting-point for the conversation. For reference, his network is here:

It has an average population density of 46 people per square kilometer, spread over 9,000 square kilometers, and the ten largest towns range from 4,000 to 30,000 in population. GDPPP is EUR 26,000. 25% of the population is under 30 years old. There are 400,000 people in 190,000 households, or 2.1 people per household.

This compares with density of 118 per Km^2, GDPPP of EUR 40,000, and 35% under age 30 for France overall, and density of 20,000 per Km^2, GDPPP of EUR 65,000, and 38% under 30 for Paris. So, the region has far lower density than average, less money, and people are older on average. Politics are more right-wing, and the sense (generally correct) in most of France is that significant infrastructure projects are reserved for Paris, while the rest of the country limps along behind at some years of remove.

A typical town looks like this:

Five hundred people spread in a 500m radius around a road intersection, with neighboring similar-sized towns three or four kilometers down each of those roads in a relatively dense mesh.

If Jay’s 25km estimate is accurate, that means his network is covering 20% of the region. If the population were spread evenly, that would be 80,000 people within his service region, in 38,000 households. The fact that he mentions 200 families suggests to me that his network is in parts of Dordogne that are more rural than average, since it would be very difficult to maintain a network at only half-a-percent of homes passed. So I’m guessing it doesn’t include any of those towns of thousands of people, and is mostly made up of farms and the more typical villages of hundred, or hamlets of dozens of people.

There are no IXPs currently in Dordogne. In France, there are seventeen IXes, with five in Paris and two in Marseille. The nearest IXPs to Dordogne are seven peers in Pau, 260km to the SSW, and thirteen peers in Toulouse, 200km to the SSE. The dense peering of Paris and Marseille are each 500km away, in different directions.

As a point of comparison, my family is from Montana, a similarly rural area of the U.S., with a population density of 2.7 per square kilometer, GDPPP of $45k (EUR 42,000), with towns spaced more like 25km apart. Montana has two IXPs, and is 1,800km from the larger IXPs of Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area, and 1,300km from Seattle. I mention this because people frequently think “no, the population density is too low where I live, I have to backhaul to a big city far away."

Anyway, we look forward to seeing whoever can make it on the call tomorrow. Bring your questions and arguments! :-)

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