The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) is a non-profit Company established in 2003 to provide neutral Internet Exchange Point

Internet Exchange Point

An Internet exchange point is a physical infrastructure through which Internet service providers exchange Internet traffic between their networks . IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic which must be delivered via their upstream transit providers, thereby reducing the average per-bit...

 services in the country. It was established with the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) to become the operational meeting point of Internet service provider

Internet service provider

An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

s (ISPs) in India. Its main purpose is to facilitate handing over of domestic Internet traffic between the peering ISP members, rather than using servers in the US or elsewhere. This enables more efficient use of international bandwidth and saves foreign exchange. It also improves the Quality of Services for the customers of member ISPs, by being able to avoid multiple international hops and thus lowering delays.

NIXI currently has seven operational nodes at the centers in Delhi (Noida), Mumbai (Vashi), Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.

General principles

1. NIXI is not an ISP and will not provide Internet connections.
2. NIXI and the ISP will enter into a membership agreement (MoU) and thereafter the peering ISPs will enter into their own bilateral or multilateral commercial agreements as the case may be.
3. NIXI will charge the member ISP as per the Schedule of Fee and Charges. The ISP will arrange for his own router/s to be placed at NIXI. Charges will include a specified rack space beyond which additional charges will apply. The connected ISP must provide and manage it thereafter.
4. NIXI will not guarantee the presence of any particular service provider to peer with. Additionally, the ISP will be free to be connected to NIXI via a leased line through any carrier he chooses. NIXI will be carrier neutral.
5. NIXI will not assign or provide for IP addresses, AS numbers, etc. Peering ISPs will make their own arrangements with APNIC for this. However, efforts will be made to assist during the initial handholding period of 8 months or so.

Services

The NIXI services consists of:

1. Access to the layer-2 switched medium (fast ethernet).
2. One IP address on the LAN with a reverse DNS mapping in the "nixi.in" domain.
3. 24x7 watch service, 24x7 hardware maintenance and 24x7 helpdesk service on the NIXI switch.
4. Adding a new route within 2 working days of receiving a request, handling complaints and problems within 3 hours of receiving them within a normal working day from 9.00 am to 5.30 pm. Outside of this 6–8 hours will be required.
5. This will be applicable when the peering ISP enters into a membership agreement with NIXI and adhere to the governing rules and regulations, including that of housing their routers in the NIXI locations.

Failure

Despite being touted as an answer to enhance local peering, NIXI has largely been a failure due to its pricing structure. It has been seen many times that inter India data transfers sometimes even gets routed by places like Singapore due to reluctance of ISP's, specially smaller ones to route it through NIXI. It's per GB pricing in spite of per port pricing has been largely responsible for this as this dissuades ISP's which have a large volume of outgoing traffic.

Further reading

• Priya Ganapati, India's 1st 'Net exchange' to be ready soon, article 4 July 2003 accessed at http://www.rediff.com/money/2003/jul/04spec1.htm