Technical
Quality of service
At CATNIX we work to guarantee the standards of Quality of Service (QoS) to provide to all members the best and professional service. Thus, from the moment of your connection request, we watch over our users to adequately inform of any change that occurs in your IXP as well as to supervise the good performance of the network.
To this end, we do not only establish mechanisms to measure the quality of service, but we also actively participate in initiatives that work for the proper functioning of the internet, such as MANRS (Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security).
Service move and change
Any change in the configuration or physical change of the peering platform will be communicated in advance to the distribution list of technicians of the connected networks as a scheduled change without effect. In case of involving any affectation, the change has to be noticed with a minimum of 15 days.
1.1. First connection
After receiving the confirmation of connection to CATNIX in the specified point of presence, the port will be activated within 3 business days.
The client’s port is initially set to the quarantine VLAN. Optical levels and operational controls are performed to ensure that there is no error or defect in the port, as well as to prevent any unauthorized protocol from being activated and unwanted traffic from being sent.
All technical specifications are described on the website.
Once all verifications have been completed, the port is assigned to the production VLAN and peering is configured with the route server. The date on which the first peering is set is considered to be the first production step.
1.2. Changes without any contractual implication
If a change is requested without contractual implication, such as a point of presence relocation or a MAC address reconfiguration, in the port configuration, this change will be executed at the date and time agreed with the CATNIX member.
1.3. Changes with contractual implications
If a change has to be made to the connection, involving a contractual upgrade, such as an additional port or a traffic extension, the changes will be made, once the new contractual situation has been regularised, within a maximum of 3 working days.
For service cancellations, according to the general conditions of the connection agreement of CATNIX, there is a period of 2 months of contractual notification from the written notification of the customer.
1.4. Changes in the peering platform
When for the needs and/or evolution of the service CATNIX has made some changes, CATNIX itself will communicate them properly to all its members. In the event that the platform is affected, the intervention will be done out-of-hours to minimise the impact that may result.
Service availability
2.1. Planned works
All scheduled maintenance and planned works by CATNIX affecting the peering platform are announced with a minimum of 15 working days, except in cases where a major technical or safety problem requires immediate maintenance, as explained in the section Interruption of service. In all cases, CATNIX will use all means at its disposal to minimize the possible impact of this maintenance.
Before any scheduled maintenance with affectation, CATNIX will apply the techniques known as BGP session culling (BCP214) to orderly close the affected BGP sessions and redirect the traffic through alternative links to avoid affectations in the participants’ traffic.
Maintenances are excluded from the calculation for the availability of the service.
All maintenance incidents will include the following information:
- Start date and hour of the maintenance
- Date of finalization and planned timing of maintenance
- Expected impact
2.2 Service interruption (detected by the client)
If the client detects or suspects any problem, either in its connection or in the CATNIX infrastructure, the incident will have to be communicated to CATNIX via telephone or through the incident tool (ticketing).
The CATNIX has a 24/7 service to deal with any incident even outside working hours.
2.3 Service interruption (detected by CATNIX)
When an incident is detected by CATNIX, customers are informed, either directly by contacting the affected entity or via a distribution list.
CATNIX provides updated information to its members on the evolution of the incident until its resolution.
All the incidents include the following information:
- Incident start date and time
- Expected incidence resolution time
- Impact
- Summary and final duration of the incident once the case is closed
The scaling processes are automatically initiated by the CATNIX NOC depending on the criticality and the duration of the incident.
Quality of service measurement
CATNIX measures the following parameters for each port:
- Input and output traffic, indicating peaks
- CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check)
- Collision
- Announced prefixes
These measures are used by the CATNIX technical team to proactively detect incidents and prevent an impact on the service.
Finally, links between nodes are also monitored and extended when necessary to avoid any risk of congestion.
3.1. My portal
Companies connected to CATNIX have a private space called My portal. This portal includes tools to check the quality of the service, such as a weathermap, traffic volume information, collision and CRC statistics, a peering matrix, the Looking Glass service, the Ookla speed test, the M-Lab node, NDT, etc. Once the service is activated, the user receives a username and password to the provided email address.
3.2. Technical reports
The CATNIX NOC issues reports with all the operations carried out on the CATNIX infrastructure and services, whether they have affected the availability of the services or not. The objective is to be as transparent as possible. These reports also include information on interruptions or incidents when applicable and are submitted twice a year to the CATNIX Technical Commission meetings.
Congestion monitoring
CATNIX monitors the traffic for each of the ports of the connected entities. From these data, a graph of the distribution of the line occupation during 24 hours in sections of 10% is constructed. The occupation percentage above 90% is compiled by calendar weeks in order to obtain statistics accumulated by years.
When a daily occupancy of 90% is detected in the course of an hour in approximately three days a week, whether incoming or outgoing, the technical representative of the affected entity is notified by email, putting the executive representative in CC (copy), in order to jointly monitor its evolution. The first working Monday of each month the situation will be reported by email until fixing the problem.
When the occupancy of the line under normal conditions is above 90% during 30 hours per week, both incoming and outgoing, the executive representative of the affected entity will be notified in writing, including in this notification the daily evolution of the occupancy above 90% during the last month.
From this notification, the affected entity will have 60 calendar days to increase the capacity of the line.
The evolution of congestion is presented twice a year to the CATNIX Technical Commission meeting.
MANRS programme
MANRS (Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security) is a global initiative to ensure the security and efficiency of routing.
The CATNIX meets the five requirements of MANRS to be part of IXP:
- Route filtering. CATNIX uses a Bird routing server to validate the received routing announcements and then filter them to other peers.
- Promote the initiative among the IXP community. This action contemplates the willingness of CATNIX to inform of the benefits of applying the MANRS standards among its members, to give them assistance on it’s application or to facilitate diffusion, among others.
- Protect the exchange platform through a policy that specifies the traffic not allowed.
- Facilitate communication and cooperation between network operators.
- Provide monitoring and clearance tools. For example, the Looking Glass tool, one of the CATNIX featured tools.
Summary
Business day / Working day: Monday to Friday, except public holidays, considering the working calendar of the city of Barcelona.
Working hours: from September to June, from 9am to 6pm, Monday to Thursday. Friday, from 9am to 2.30pm. July and August, from 8am to 3pm, Monday to Friday.
Non-working hours: hours outside the working day.
NOC (Network Operation Centre): technical staff responsible for monitoring and resolving CATNIX incidents.
Security problem: technical emergency defined as
- Non-application by the client of adequate filters by flows or protocols not allowed in their connection and that technically impact the platform and/or the quality of the service that is delivered to other clients.
- Security problem originated by the connection of the client, generating flows or unusual attacks in the platform.
- Material/physical problem to the client’s port or its equipment connected to the platform, generating instability in the platform.
A security problem may require immediate isolation, partial or total, of the client’s connection.
Planned work: maintenance, configuration of the service, migration or change in any of the services offered by CATNIX, all reported in advance.
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CATNIX. The Catalonia Neutral Internet Exchange Point