Toronto Internet Exchange

The Toronto Internet Exchange (TorIX) is an Internet Exchange Point located in a carrier hotel at 151 Front Street West in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

TorIX initially started in July 1996 within the RACO facility at 151 Front St. W.

As of 2007-12-5, TorIX had 80+ connected members and traffic rates over 7 Gbit/s, making it the largest IXP in Canada. TorIX is thus the exchange point with the largest membership of Canadian ISPs. However, Canada is a very large country physically, and many smaller ISPs, especially those that operate in the western provinces of the country, are not connected as they can be located over 2000 km away.

TorIX offers ethernet connections of 10/100TX or 1000SX, providing a large range of speed. 10GE interfaces were introduced during a switch platform upgrade which started on 26 January 2008, shortly after midnight Eastern time. TorIX assigns peers IP addresses from its own assigned pool of IPv4 addresses and operates two BGP route-servers which allow individual members to connect to a large number of TorIX members with a minimum of effort and maintenance. Members are welcome to negotiate IP peering agreements directly with each other as well.

The Exchange does not currently charge to connect at rates of up to 100Mb/sec. Those organizations that desire gigabit or 10 gigabit connections must contact the Exchange directly and pay a one-time connection fee, from which TorIX recoups its equipment and operational expenses. Carriers, ISP's, content providers and other organizations wishing to connect to TorIX must arrange colocation for their equipment with one of the many companies operating at 151 Front Street.

IPv6 connectivity is also available at TorIX and a small number of members currently take advantage of this. As demand in North America for IPv6 increases, so will use of TorIX's IPv6 offering.

TorIX operates several mailing lists; two are TorIX specific, one dealing with operational issues, the other a general member participation list. The Exchange also hosts a mailing list for wholesale ISP's which connect to Bell Canada (formerly Bell Nexxia)'s wholesale DSL services, and this is a key source for up-to-date information on day-to-day issues experienced by operators. This list was formerly hosted by a dissolved Ottawa, Canada ISP called iStop, and was moved to the TorIX servers after numerous requests by members after that ISP folded.

In February 2007, TorIX was a co-sponsor of NANOG's conference in Toronto, Canada.

ee also

* Front Street

External links

* [http://www.torix.net Official TorIX website]
* [http://www.torix.net/stats.php Traffic statistics]
* [http://www.151frontstreet.com/ 151 Front Street website]