Representatives of European Peering Nodes Met in Prague

CESNET – an association of all universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic – together with the peering association NIX.CZ organised the 7th annual Euro-IX Forum on 19 and 20 September 2005 in Prague. The meeting was attended by representatives of more than thirty peering nodes from the whole of Europe, Japan and the USA.

The European Internet Exchange Association (Euro-IX) was established in May 2001 with the aim of supporting further development, strengthening and improvement of the Internet Exchange Point community. It includes co-operation of individual peering nodes across Europe consisting in the unification of the technical standards used by the nodes, in common procedures in the area of statistical assessment, information activities, etc. For more details, visit https://www.euro-ix.net/forum/7th/.

At the end of January this year the co-organizer of the Prague meeting, the CESNET association increased the capacity of the connection of the national research and education network CESNET2 to the NIX.CZ peering node to 20 Gb/s. This is the highest speed at which any of the domestic networks is connected to the NIX.CZ node. The CESNET2 network connection is implemented through two mutually independent optical circuits. Each reaches a speed of 10 Gb/s.

The CESNET association
was founded by universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It is currently financed primarily by its members and the Research and Development Council. The association operates and develops CESNET2, the national gigabit optical network intended for research and education, and participates in the research and development of information and communication technologies. Thanks to its research activities and achieved results, the CESNET association represents the Czech Republic in the European GN2 project, as well as in other international projects. Among other countries, the association currently cooperates with Canada, the Netherlands, and the USA on the construction of GLIF (Global Lambda Integrated Facility), a global lambda network whose Czech section is called CzechLight.

The NIX.CZ association
The interest association of legal entities NIX.CZ associates major Czech Internet providers (ISP). The objective of the association is to ensure the operation of a neutral exchange (peering) node (Neutral Internet Exchange) enabling mutual interconnection of the Internet networks of the individual members (peering). Another purpose of the association's activity is the protection of the common interests of the operators of internet type networks in the Czech Republic. (More information at www.nix.cz.)