Pheon-IX
Consolidating Internet Exchange Points in Paris

What is the Pheon-IX project?


The more successful Internet Exchanges (IXPs) has evolved from collabortive efforts to improve connectivity in local markets to organisations that provide essential value to the Internet Industry. The Paris area has large & active marketplace of ISP's, content network and a large number of IXP's focused on exchanging IP traffic, but has a number of challenges due to a highly fragmented distribution of exchange points and varying level of infratsructure support. The Pheon-IX project, founded by a group of network operators & content networks with operation in Paris seeks to build a scalable distributed metro switch fabric consolidating many of the existing IXP's within a sustainable operations model.

Paris: An International Internet Traffic Hub

Paris is ideally positioned as a major "hub" for international internet traffic, as France has a an abunance of telecoms infrastructure connecting much of the world through submarine cables connecting South East Asia, the Middle East, the Americas and East Australia. However, to sustain this growth the industry will need an IXP infrastructure that is robust, scalable and capable of promoting the transaction of telecoms business processes
image source: www.smw3.com

What is the need?

Infrastructure that recognises Peering as critical business function: A ‘Next Generation’ IXP capable of driving growth in emerging business sectors beyond wholesale IP like mobile IP, Video conferencing and VoIP
The approach the Pheon-IX project is proposing is to consolidate existing exchanges to ensure we build on the success of existing initatives by providing a means for the IXP's to grow and adapt to current and future infrastructure demands. 


The next step for the project is an evaluation of demand and the willingness to create a mandate for deploying Pheon-IX among ISP's, facilities and other operators in Paris. The Pheon-IX Working Group have created a survey (see below) that we're sending to over 200 telecoms industry contacts with some interest or investments in the Paris region. The submission period ends May 31st 2009 we will have an evaluation of the data completed by Mid June.

From this point, if there is proven demand the project will move from the research phase to a formation and deployment phase. We'll update this site with more details as the project matures through the following key phases:

Create a non-profit organisational entity 

With an ownership structure with participants are shareholders in Association similar to other European IXP

Design & foundation phase 

Establish an agreement with an operator to outsource business and technical operations
Build service layer to meet new demands

Promotion

Attract domestic and international network operators and content networks to Paris 
Partner with specialist next gen applications  for example: Voice/Video platforms, and integrate the platforms to facilitate business interaction

We will keep this website updated with information about the project for more information about the project or to share comments and suggestions please fill out the survey, leave your comments in the final section and sign up for the mailing list.

 - Pheon-IX Working Group,
 info@pheon-ix.net