picto statistiques Frequently Asked Questions

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  • GENERAL

    Peering consists in the exchange of Internet data (traffic) between 2 networks.

     

    Public peering is achieved through an exchange point, which gathers a wide range of connected networks willing to exchange traffic among themselves. Its audience consists of Internet network professionals who manage their own AS (Autonomous System).

     

    Peering and exchange points thus bring a number of advantages:

    • Economic benefits: reducing IP transit expenses and optimising infrastructure costs (traffic exchange on the exchange point is free of charge, only the connection is charged);
    • Technical benefits: reduced latency, better routing control and connectivity resilience, especially for critical applications.
     

    Peering thus meets perfectly the growing needs of network infrastructures technical and financial optimization from any organization managing its own IP network.

    Absolutely not, peering and IP transit services are complementary and you need several IP transit service providers to make sure you can access all the Internet around the world. France-IX offers you the shortest paths towards the connected networks on its platform but does not substitute IP transit.

     

    If you are looking for new IP transit service providers, France-IX facilitates the purchasing and delivery of such services through its Marketplace. IP transit services can be delivered directly to your peering port through an additional VLAN and need to be contracted directly with the Marketplace sellers. For more information, please visit the Marketplace section on our website: https://www.franceix.net/fr/solutions/marketplace/.

    France-IX is the Premier Internet Peering Service Provider in France, offering public and private interconnection services through its carrier and data center neutral exchange points in Paris and Marseille. Its multi-service shared platform offers the following services:

     
    • Simple, reliable, trusted, fair and competitive interconnection services in France, in full neutrality and financial independence;
    • Multi-service and international interconnection through its Marketplace.
     

    France-IX is composed of 2 entities:

    • France IX Services, a private company who manages administrative, legal, technical and operational aspects (clients, suppliers and employees);
    • France-IX, a non-profit organisation who is the sole shareholder of the company and manages members in an equal and neutral way.
     

    By becoming a client of the private company, each network becomes automatically a member of the association without paying any additional membership fee. Each and every member owns an equal vote during the annual general meeting to vote for the closure of the financial accounts and elect the board members, who guarantees the community best interests. No physical presence is required.

    The first requirement is to have an ASN (Autonomous System Number) by becoming LIR (Local Internet Registry) with the RIPE NCC (or equivalent body in the relevant geographical zone). The second requirement is to participate in the exchange of traffic with the connected members. Traffic exchange between members is free of charge. In case of a commercial relationship between two members for providing IP transit for instance, the member has the option to subscribe to such additional services via France-IX Marketplace.

    France-IX interconnects over 400 members from all over the world, representing real diversity in terms of profiles: operators, Internet service providers, content delivery networks, hosting providers, domain name system (DNS) resources, e-media, gaming, cloud services, social networks, e-commerce, e-mailing, security services, data centers, multinationals, etc. We invite you to check the full list of our members in order to identify those of interest for you.

    Here is how to contact us effectively, depending on the nature of your request: https://blog.franceix.net/how-to-contact-us-in-2018/

    The France-IX team travels in France and around the world to attend various industry tradeshows and conferences. Check out the upcoming events here: https://www.franceix.net/en/events-and-news/events/.

    To come and meet us, contact the relevant team through our website: https://www.franceix.net/en/contact/.

    FIRST CONNECTION

    Members are connected to France-IX’s network with 1, 10 or 100 GE ports through which they exchange their traffic. France-IX offers a wide range of traffic subscriptions responding to all capacity needs, available here: https://www.franceix.net/en/solutions/pricing/

    Please use the commercial form here: https://www.franceix.net/fr/solutions/requestform/ or click on the “Get started now” button on the top left corner of our website at any time. Please note that sending this form is not binding in any way.

    • The first solution is remote peering through one of France-IX partners, expanding fast in France and internationally. We have developed the PoP Finder tool, which displays on a map all our points of presence and those of our reseller partners and allows you to ask them quotes directly.
    • The second solution is to use the infrastructure of carriers. To save you some time, we have listed - for your information only - the dark fibers sellers available in the Paris metro area.
    • The third alternative if you traffic is below 100Mbps is to take advantage of the gateway service if you are a SFINX member in Paris, a LYONIX member in Lyon, a LU-CIX member in Luxembourg, a Top-IX member in Turin or a TouIX member in Toulouse.
     

    All these remote connection solutions are described here.

    France-IX does not offer colocation or hosting among its services. We encourage you to contact directly our datacenter partners in your city of interest (Scaleway, Interxion, Jaguar Network, Equinix, Telehouse).

     

    In addition, we have negotiated special offers with some of our datacenter partners for France-IX members only.

    All our ports (1, 10 and 100 GE) are pre-cabled to the meet-me-room so we can deliver these between 2 and maximum 5 working days, after the cross-connect delivery. Our service delivery timeframes are the same for all PoPs and the same in Paris and Marseille.

    We took into account our members’ feedback, who have spoken in favour of interconnecting our two exchange points in Paris and Marseille, which used to be independent. Thanks to the PASS Service, it is now possible to benefit, on request, from the access and the usage of the France-IX platform in the remote city of your physical connection.


    More information on this page: https://www.franceix.net/en/solutions/pass-service/

    Your first connection to the platform implies a membership to the France IX Association, under the conditions established in the association’s statutes. You have the right to vote in the annual General Meeting to elect the board members who will represent your best interests and to vote for the closing of the financial accounts of the company. We highly encourage you to attend the event, which takes place every year in September. If you are unable to attend, you have the possibility to vote online.

    The association statutes are available on our website.

    To exchange traffic with another member, this involves simply to send them, as soon as you are connected, a request by email to the peering email address that is displayed in our member list.

     

    Every new member joining the exchange point is announced to all members through a welcome email, along with a reminder of the technical features allowing the exchange of traffic. The route server also provides all the routes announced by the members connected to it.

     

    The route server also provides the list of routes of the members connected to it.

    PeeringDB is a non-profit, free and online database listing 3 types of resources: IP networks with AS numbers (like yourself), facilities (datacenters when your network has presence) and IXPs (like France-IX) all over the world.

     

    It has become essential for peering coordinators, who use it regularly and even automatically. Besides being useful, it becomes mandatory as some networks require to be listed on PeeringDB before establishing any peering session. For example, your peering requests to Amazon, Google or Apple would not be considered, if you are not registered in the database.

     

    To ensure the best possible peering experience at France-IX, please take the time to register, update or complete your peeringDB profile before your connection.

    There are 5 ways to keep you updated :

    • The list of our members on our website;
    • The technical mailing list, which is updated on the date of joining of the new member;
    • France-IX’s monthly newsletter the month following the member’s connection;
    • Updates from the members themselves in peeringDB (useful APIs);
    • Some selected announcements on France-IX’s social media accounts.

    The email provided to France-IX as the “peering contact” is automatically registered to our technical mailing list once your connection is activated. Keep in mind you can provide several technical emails per member. Paris and Marseille have separate discussion and announcements lists.

     

    Please stay aware that these lists are reserved for technical discussions and announcements from France-IX towards its members and from member-to-member. Support requests are to be sent to noc_at_franceix.net and not to the technical mailing list.

    SERVICES

    France-IX’s quality of service is defined at different levels: delay, delay variation (jitter), frame loss and service availability of France-IX infrastructure, as well as objectives on provisioning, move and change of services. All the criteria are defined in this dedicated section on France-IX website.

     

    This section gathers all the resources, processes and objectives surrounding France-IX services, aiming to guarantee the highest quality to the France-IX communities in Paris and Marseille.

    In case of technical outage requiring immediate attention, please open a ticket with France-IX NOC, reachable by email 24x7 at noc_at_franceix.net or via the customer portal Tools (see tab “support”).

     

    Please send your technical requests using the contact form of France-IX website: https://www.franceix.net/en/contact/.

     

    We listed some possible cases on our blog.

    France-IX does not implement any traffic shaping/rate limiting in order to preserve the quality of service for its members. This is not a common practice in the Internet industry and is a proof of goodwill from France-IX towards your network. In return, we ask you to respond in a reactive, professional way if you significantly exceed your traffic subscription.

     

    See also “”.

    It depends on the available capacity on your connection port. As long as the physical port saturation is not reached, the traffic flows, without any packet loss (see “Do you apply any traffic shaping/rate limiting?”). If the traffic exchanged reached the saturation of your physical port, packet losses will occur, impacting the overall quality. You can adjust your policy of BGP route announcements to reduce your traffic, and then solve the situation in a more sustainable way, by subscribing to additional ports for instance.

    Traffic is calculated by France-IX using the 95th percentile method, based on daily samples taken every 5 minutes.

    The BGP protocol is used to establish bilateral sessions between two members, who will exchange their respective routes. Interconnection with the route servers is also done via BGP.

    Yes, IPv4 and IPv6 traffic can be exchanged on the same peering VLAN. France-IX allocates to every member an IPv4 and IPv6 address in the peering LAN.

    Route servers are servers with which members can establish BGP sessions in order to centralize routes and reduce network management. Indeed, all the valid routes of the members connected to the route servers are by default reallocated. The adoption of route servers is very high at France-IX: 91% in Paris and 83% in Marseille.

     

    A route server is not a router. There is no data going through the RS, it is only used to aggregate BGP information. For example, even if two members only establish BGP sessions with the route servers, they will be able to exchange routing information through the route server, but the data will flow directly between their routers.

     

    BGP communities have been implemented, in addition to various features in order to help you refine and secure your routing policy. More information are available on the route servers section of France-IX website.

    Strict filtering based on IRR and ROA validation states has been activated on route servers. You can find all the useful information here and check the amount of filtered routes on the customer portal “Tools” here.

    Yes, it is possible to set up a private VLAN between 2 members. This is our private peering service, charged 100€ NRC for each member and zero MRC. Please agree prior with your peer(s) of interest and send your request to the sales team at sales_at_franceix.net to process the order form and the activation.

    Yes, thanks to the “Tools” customer portal.

     

    “Tools” is an online platform totally dedicated to the members. The login and password are unique to your company and are provided to you in your welcome email upon your first activation. Through a secure personal space, members can monitor their traffic flow and identify easily the peers with whom they exchange data. During 2019, “Tools” will offer even more options like the service technical details, the listing of your invoices and the option to change your traffic subscription.

    You can renew your password using this link by providing the email address associated with your account. If you are unsure of the email address, you can send an email to the NOC.

    The France-IX Marketplace enables its members to purchase complementary services in addition to peering services, optimising their connection, which goes beyond the traditional IXP offerings. Available services are IP transit, anti-DDoS solutions, cloud direct access, paid peering, Ethernet transport, network visibility and analytics solutions, remote peering and voice services. Services are available instantly in all France-IX points of presence, which allows all France-IX members to access all the Marketplace services anywhere, irrespectively of their equipment location. Traffic exchanged between a buyer member and its Marketplace partners is not counted as peering traffic, therefore does not impact its peering traffic subscription.

     

    You can find the list of our Marketplace sellers as well as their contact information on our dedicated Marketplace section of France-IX website (parts 6 and 7).

    PRICING

    The costs charged by France-IX (non recurring and recurring) represent the cost to get access and use France-IX’s platform, which gives the possibility to exchange traffic with all the networks connected in Paris and/or Marseille. The traffic exchange between members (also known as “peering”) is done between connected networks without any additional fee.

     

    The peering service is provided with a number of additional technical options (without any extra cost):

     

    The peering service costs depend on the port type and the traffic subscription. They are the same for all members, the same in Paris or Marseille, fixed for the calendar year and (by email at available publicly on France-IX's website.

    No, there is no minimum commitment duration, you can cease your contract at any time with a 2-month notice period.

    No, France-IX does not offer 2, 3 or 5-year contract duration. The common interest for the community is to benefit from the best value for money every year.

     

    However, in case of annual invoicing, France-IX offers you a 3% discount on your recurring fees.

    Volume discounts, especially for nx10GE ports, are directly included in France-IX public pricing. There is no discount for buying services at France-IX Paris and France-IX Marseille.

    The Board of Directors of the France IX Association votes for the pricing evolutions once a year. They are announced at the end of the year and become effective on January 1st. For the past five years, prices have decreased every year.

    No, your connection to France-IX implies your free-of-charge membership to the association.

    We deliver our services in the meet-me-rooms of the datacenters where we have deployed our network. You are responsible for ordering and paying for the cross-connect in the datacentre where we will interconnect. Once the agreement is signed, our technical team starts the provisioning process by giving you a Letter of Authorization (LOA) with our position in the meet-me-room so you can order your cross-connect directly to your datacentre or service provider.

    The only services that can be subject to additional fees are the following:

    • Private peering service: VLAN between 2 or several members on the platform, charged 100€ NRC for each member and zero MRC;
    • Marketplace service: VLAN with the marketplace sellers, charged 100€ NRC per activated marketplace service and zero MRC (the service is to be paid directly to the marketplace seller);
    • PASS service: access and usage of the France-IX platform in a remote city from the connection city (Paris or Marseille), charged 100€ NRC et MRC according to the level of your traffic subscription (pricing coming soon).
     

    Technical options of the peering services such as route servers, blackholing or interconnection with partner IXs are free of charge.

     

    As a reminder, there is no membership fee to join the France-IX association.

    INVOICING

    The invoicing starts on the following half of the month following your service acceptance date. In other words, if your service was accepted on the 10th day of the current month, your invoicing starts on the 15th day of the same month and if your service was accepted on the 20th day of the current month, it starts on the 1st day of the following month.

    Our billing cycles are quarterly or annually for members and monthly for resellers. Invoices are sent on the 1st day of the billing period by email and/or by regular mail to the billing contact filled out during your first connection.

    Please send your updated information to billing_at_franceix.net (billing contact name/email/phone/address).

    Invoices are payable in Euros within a period of thirty (30) days from the date they are issued, by Single European Payments Area (SEPA) direct debit payment for Partners registered in the SEPA countries or by default, by bank transfer.

    The customer portal “Tools” will soon offer the possibility to access invoices. In the meantime, if you need historical billing information, please do not hesitate billing_at_franceix.net.

    Please contact our billing team: billing_at_franceix.net with the reference(s) of your invoice(s).

     

    To give you greater clarity on our invoice, please click below :

    See the print version “how to read my bill?”.

    CHANGE MY SERVICES

    Sous 24h après votre notification (email ou téléphone), un avenant à votre contrat de connexion vous est envoyé. Le processus d’upgrade de la connexion débute à réception de l’avenant signé par vos soins. Les upgrades sur un même port physique sont réalisés sous un jour ouvré.

    Within 24 hours after your notification (by email or phone), a contract amendment is sent to you. A two-month notice starts upon receipt of the amendment signed by you. The connection is downgraded on D-day and the invoicing adapted accordingly.

    We maintain your former service activated during one week from the date of connection of the new one so you can migrate smoothly your traffic on the new port (without any double charge).

    Yes, in order to limit the risk of level 2 loop on the peering LAN, France-IX applies a filtering allowing only MAC addresses of the member’s router on their port. If you plan to change the equipment or port connected to France-IX, which triggers a change of your MAC address, please notify the France-IX NOC in advance at noc_at_franceix.net with the following information:

    • France-IX service ID;
    • Existing MAC address;
    • New MAC address;
    • Scheduled timeframe for MAC change.
     

    In the case of an urgent replacement of your equipment, involving a change of MAC, the NOC remains available 24/7 to implement the changes as quickly as possible.

    When you exceed your traffic subscription or if you anticipate an upcoming traffic increase, please contact us at sales_at_franceix.net in order to adjust your traffic subscription. We will send you a contract amendment allowing you to upgrade to the desired traffic commitment. The upgrade process starts upon receipt of your contract amendment. Upgrades on the same physical port are achieved typically within one business day.

     

    Moreover, France-IX may contact you proactively when you exceed your traffic subscription on a regular basis, according to our terms and conditions. If this is a permanent situation, we invite you to regularise your situation by sending you a contract amendment, or by decreasing your traffic in order to remain within the level of your traffic subscription.

     

    France-IX does not wish to implement any traffic shaping/rate limiting in order to preserve the quality of exchanges on the platform. This is not a common practice in the Internet industry and is proof of indulgence from France-IX towards your network. In return, we ask you to respond in a reactive, professional way if you significantly exceed your traffic subscription.

    The termination must be notified via registered post with acknowledgement of receipt. A two-month notice commences on the date of receipt of this letter, and the connection is deactivated on D-Day.

    France-IX reserves the right to terminate the contract with a member in the following cases:

    • If the member does not have at least one active peer on the exchange point;
    • If the member fails to fulfil their contractual commitments (including failure to pay for their service or to comply with security rules).
    OTHER QUESTIONS ?