Members of the Dutch Amsterdam Internet Exchange have given the organisation a green light to incorporate a US entity in order to engage with the Open IX initiative and have the ability to run an exchange in the US while minimising risk to the Dutch association and the Dutch operating company.
This completes the announcements from the big 3 European exchanges (LINX, AMS-IX and DECIX) to operate interconnection services in the US, with the first to make an overt move being LINX, who are in the process of establishing an operation in Northern Virginia. DECIX issued a press release last week that they plan to enter the New York market, and now AMS-IX have a member endorsement to make a move.
There have been concerns amongst the Dutch technical community, who have long held AMS-IX in high regard, that establishing operations in the US will leave the AMS-IX as a whole vulnerable to the sort of systemic monitoring that has been revealed in the press in past weeks. While this is partly the reason for the AMS-IX company suggesting a separate legal entity, in order to hold the US operations at arms length, is it enough for some of the Dutch community? Seems not. In this message the Dutch R&E Network SURFnet seem to think the whole thing was rushed, might not be in the best interests of the community, and voted against the move.
It has been noted that members of the Open IX community, including members of the Open IX Board, were openly calling for AMS-IX members to vote “YES”, and suggesting they also “go out and get 5 other votes”.
What do people think about that? Given that an IX that affiliates to Open IX will have to pay Open IX membership dues, was it right of them to appear to lobby AMS-IX members?
What do people think about the establishment of the separate legal entity? Will this be enough?
Has this done lasting damage to the standing of AMS-IX in the Dutch networking community? Does this matter, or has AMS-IX grown so large that such goodwill doesn’t matter anymore?
On the bigger question, is this sort of thing damaging in the long term to the EU peering community? Does the growth into different countries with different cultures threaten to dilute the member-based ethos that defines a lot of EU exchanges? Or is that just another management challenge for the IX operator to solve?
Might Equinix, who have so far not directly competed with the established EU exchanges, decide they are taking the gloves off and start their own European IX operations in a turf war?
Interesting times.
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