About MyIX

Why MyIX?

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) was tasked to look at reviewing the existing Internet exchange arrangement for Malaysia, i.e. the MIX, which was set up in 2003 by two leading Internet Service Providers (ISP), namely TM and JARING. MIX had been established on a purely commercial basis and with the rapid development in the industry with many more ISPs in operation, this arrangement was seen to be not effective in serving the demands of the industry.

The manner of arrangements between these two ISP operators in the growing and competitive market has however led to various challenging issues and concerns for other ISPs, some of these being :

Due to the above reasons many smaller ISPs have resorted to connecting to other IXs outside Malaysia that offers better rates and platform for them in their peering arrangements.The consequence of Malaysian ISPs establishing direct connections to foreign ISPs had led to a number of implications, which if not mitigated can be detrimental to the state and growth of our industry, more so when we are positioning Malaysia as a global communications hub (as stated in the CMA 98)

On 14 September 206, the Minister, via one press conference made it public that the neutral Malaysian Internet exchange, which is referred to here as MyIX, is to be up and running by year-end.An Internet exchange is where multiple ISPs locate their backbone IP router nodes in single building / location usually operated by an independent co-location provider.The study done by the appointed consultant had identified a number of issues and concerns that support the need for the establishment of MyIX in Malaysia.

Broadband Service
With domestic traffic under the existing arrangement going around the world to reach its destination it will become hard to ensure a justifiable quality of service, this will in turn affect the take up of broadband in Malaysia.There is a need to correct the situation of the inability of the existing MIX to meet the needs of the other ISPs, otherwise it will become more expensive to continuously upgrade international bandwidth.Only by keeping domestic traffic local will the ISPs be able to ensure better and more efficient traffic handling, improved quality of service, and ultimately higher take-up of broadband among consumers.

Boomerang Effect
Currently, the smaller ISPs are already routing their Internet traffic through multiple international gateway and quite sizably to a neighbouring county due to the unfavorable peering arrangements between local providers and the high costs of leased lines involved.This had resulted in a “boomerang effect”, with local Internet traffic having to traverse over a number of legs on international routes to access local contents and local destinations.

MyIX divided into three phases:-

Phase 1

  1. Proof of concept
    • A proof of concept deployment will be undertaken at the AIMS data centre in Menara Aik Hua with minimum equipment and Network Management Software setup.
    • AIMS data centre is chosen as the reference site since this centre houses the most ( 20 other) co-located ISPs on peering arrangements.
    • The proof of concept Phase 1b will include the upgrading and setting up of equipment for the proposed IX with redundancy and full resiliency.
  2. The other two centres, forming a ring configuration, are located within TM at the Fiberail Network Control Centre in Kuala Lumpur and within JARING at Technology Park Malaysia at Bukit Jalil.
  3. The whole of Phase 1 is expected to be completed bymid March 2007

Phase 2

  1. Phase 2 is targeted to start from mid March 2007 until mid June 2007. The phase will extend the reach of the IX to other parts of the Peninsular Malaysia.
  2. Based on the population concentration, three new data centre sites will be established at Penang, Johor Bahru and Kuantan.
  3. As a start, these centres will be connected to the current centres at 1Gbps.
  4. Fibre connections will be procured from several suppliers according to best pricing and availability. This will provide the neutral IX (MyIX) with a more robust backbone.

Phase 3

  1. In the third phase, MyIX will be expanded to East Malaysia to make it a truly ubiquitous architecture nationwide.
  2. This phase is expected to be rolled out from mid 2007

What’s Next?
The first 6 month from the launch of MyIX will be an important period in term of observing and monitoring the growth and development of MyIX and in terms of taking the necessary adjustment measures to see that its establishment under the MYIX initiative goes according to the vision and plan.

In many IX initiatives throughout, the world, the setting up of IXs continues to be a learning experience and it is important that the collaborative spirit taken by the participants in ensuring the objectives of MyIX.

MyIX is intended to be operating as a small entity with personnel and expertise covering the key areas of :

  1. Overall General Management
  2. Technical
  3. Finance
  4. Marketing
  5. Public Relations

It is expected that the operations of MyIX will be supported by staff fielded in form the member companies during the course of completing Phase 1. As MyIX grows in the subsequent phases, the organization will take shape accordingly as it position itself to be at the forefront of Internet exchange operations