Policies

The Alaska Internet Exchange exists as a voluntary cooperative effort among participants.

• AlaskaIX requires single-mode fiber media types. No copper or multi-mode fiber media types are currently supported.
• Only one source MAC address is allowed per port. AlaskaIX can allow 2 MAC addresses to allow participants to switch their equipment without coordination - contact the NOC.
• There are only three ethertypes allowed:
  1. 0x0800 (IPv4)
  2. 0x0806 (ARP)
  3. 0x86dd (IPv6)
• The only non-unicast traffic allowed is broadcast ARP and multicast ICMPv6 Neighbor Discovery packets. Per-neighbor timeouts that result in flooded (broadcast/multicast) packets should be set to 4 hours or as close to that as possible.
• A participant's router must be configured to receive and respond to ARP packets from all AlaskaIX participants, even those that are not direct peers.
• Participants may not sniff traffic between other participants.
• Participants must use an ASN that is allocated by an RIR (Regional Internet Registry), such as ARIN.  Private or reserved ASN’s cannot be used.
• Participants may not point default or otherwise use another participant's or AlaskaIX's resources without permission.
• Peering across the AlaskaIX fabric must be non-transit and settlement free.
• Participants must not allow AlaskaIX subnets to propagate externally from their network and should minimize internal propagation as much as possible.
• To peer with AlaskaIX route servers, an actively maintained PeeringDB entry is required.
• The route servers require participants to document their routes and downstream ASNs in IRR objects and/or RPKI ROAs. If you are not familiar with this process, we recommend you use ARIN’s service (assuming you are in the ARIN region). They have documentation available.
• Participants must maintain their as-set in PeeringDB for our automation tools to reference. If PeeringDB is not an option for you, contact the NOC.  
• Participants must be responsive to other participants and AlaskaIX administrators in order to protect the short and long-term health of the exchange fabric. Urgent issues may result in suspension of a participant in order to protect the fabric.