Consorzio Top-IX

 

TOP-IX (TOrino Piemonte Internet eXchange) is a non-profit consortium counting more than 60 members including SMEs, large ICT and TLC corporations, public institutions and local universities.

Its aim is to increase the development of Internet by managing a NAP (Neutral Access Point, otherwise known as Internet Exchange - IX) for the exchange of Internet traffic in North West Italy; this system promotes the practice of peering and supports the achievement of network neutrality as a mean to advance Internet development.

 

TOP-IX activities are twofold: the Development Program (DP) and the Internet Exchange (IX). The Development Program, set up in 2006, promotes and develops innovation projects, diffusing the use of broadband Internet.

The DP works at the infrastructural level (i.e. band, server, hosting, housing, etc.) and sets out to support the testing and trialling - at a pre-competitive stage - of technologies, services, operational and business models; in addition to that, it supports innovative initiatives that use broadband Internet as a main tool. The DP aims at increasing Piedmont's competitiveness; developing top class skills in a range of sectors and markets; facilitating the creation and development of working partnerships among innovative private business ventures; and spreading the concept of Internet culture as a reference paradigm for innovative activities and actions.

 

The Internet Exchange (IX) offers interconnection services to consortium members, allowing "peering agreements" for the exchange of Internet traffic using BGP4 (IPv4) and BGP4+ (IPv6) protocols. The infrastructure offered by the Consortium to its members is geographically distributed and covers all the main towns in the Piedmont region as well as Ivrea, Aosta, Pont Saint Martin and Milan. Through the IX broadband diffusion is improved, services are brought closed to stakeholders, and each local area involved is developed. Distributed platform flexibility makes it possible to configure logically separate networks at Level 2, geared towards implementing public peering agreements, and set up in such a way to exclude reciprocal transit and/or private peering agreements implemented on dedicated (private) VLANs, where reciprocal visibility is only for persons interested in the agreement itself.

With 49 successful projects supported in the last two years, TOP-IX is is a unique implementation of the open innovation model where incumbents and new players of the Internet Industry can design and test new technologies and business ideas.