About the Exchange

Omaha IX – If You Want to Peer, Why Not Meet in the Middle?

Omaha IX’s Nebraska Location Provides the Perfect Location for Peering Networks.

Located at the Carrier Hotel at 1623 Farnam Street, positions Omaha IX at the center point of US online traffic. Whether your network route takes you east, west, north or south, you are equidistant from each coast and hubs for most major content providers.

Established in January 2014 at one of the fastest growing carrier hotels in the US (Nebraska Data Centers), Omaha IX is owned and managed by Makato Networks, of Mankato Minnesota. Mankato Networks provides consulting and engineering services for some of the most advanced communications carriers in the US. This reputation, and vast experience was a foundation for Mankato’s initiative as a founding member of the Midwest Internet Cooperative Exchange (MICE) in Minneapolis and the concept validation to establishing Omaha IX.

Although commonplace in Europe, Peering Exchanges are growing in popularity within the US and with the ever growing increase in online traffic consumption has become a valuable tool for improving network performance and lowering overall transport costs. A presence within Nebraska Data Centers, and a connection into Omaha IX allows you to:

  • Lower cost of transporting traffic across “third-party” connections (Less bandwidth needed)
  • Create a central peering point to share your traffic routes and avoid delays of sending traffic to routes outside of the desired destination.
  • Traffic is transported for one, low cost and stable connection avoiding the tiered approach of upstream ISP providers
  • Network performs more efficiently through streamlined traffic and fewer AS hops between destinations

Ultimately, connecting your network to peers such as large content companies, Internet service providers, communications companies, government and educational facilities lowers costs, improves network performance and with less hops and controlled networks provides a security benefit as well.

How do I connect

We want everyone that is capable of connecting to the exchange to connect - however, you'll need a few things:

  1. You need to be in or have the ability to connect to 1623 Farnam St in Omaha (NCC).
  2. You'll need your own Autonomous System Number (ASN).
Once connected you'll have full control over their routing policies at the exchange and may peer with as many or as few other peers as desired - that said we do suggest the use of our route-servers.

Do I need my own IP allocations

We do not require that you have your own ARIN assigned address allocation, but it certainly helps. If you do not though, we only require a Letter of Authority (LoA) from your ISP permitting you to advertise their IPv4 and/or IPv6 prefixes. You must have your own unique ASN though.

What do I need for equipment

The BEST way to connect to the exchange is directly through a layer-3 device (router). It is the best chance of not leaking MAC addresses or STP traffic - as well as increases the stability of network. It is possible to connect via a layer-2 device (switch), however we strongly discourange it. If you must, there are a few guidelines in our configuration section you'll have to meet to make sure not to disrupt your other peers

Do I need on-site equipment

There are a few options here in how you connect to the actual exchange - we can help you with any of the options to get you connected:

  1. Use ethernet transport through a 3rd party who is already in NCC.
  2. Use long range optics (depending of course how far away from NCC you are located).
  3. Rent space from the exchange.
  4. Rent space directly from NCC.

What speed of connections are available

The speed is limited only to your connection. We currently offer 1G and 10G - in which multiple ports may be bonded together. We don't charge you for the amount of traffic - just for your connection.

Brief History

The OmahaIX exchange point was started in January of 2014 at the Nebraska Colocation Center in Omaha, NE. This was a great location due to the connectivity that was already there and the dark fiber expansion by Neutral Path Communications. Modeled off what we learned with the Midwest Internet Cooperative Exchange - we knew there would be a great value for participents in the Omaha area.

Equipment at the exchange

At the core of the exchange are two Juniper EX4550 switches that provides amble throughput using 1000/10G/40G connections. Our backplane can support up to 256Gbps of traffic. The other key piece of equipment are the route servers. Our route servers are running BIRD - an internet routing daemon which has become the standard for internet exchanges.

OpenIX Certification

We plan to purse the OmenIX certification when the certification window is open for Omaha. Below is the current status of our progress:

OpenIX Requirement OmahaIX Compliance
Public Exchange Vlan Compliant
Private VLAN Compliant
1G Ports Compliant
10G Ports Compliant
ethertype 0×0800 Compliant
ethertype 0x86dd Compliant
ipv4 multicast filtering Planned
ipv6 multicast filtering Planned
Open Connection Policy Compliant
Public website containing connection types Compliant
Demarc Compliant, Demarcation at OmahaIX switch port
Switch Back plane Capacity Compliant, switching fabrics are line rate
Interswitch links Compliant
Redundant Power Compliant, dual fed power for all devices
Switch Back plane Capacity Compliant, switching fabrics are line rate
Single Component Redundancy Plan Needs to be posted to website
RIR Address Space Compliant
Switch Back plane Capacity Compliant, switching fabrics are line rate
Route Server IPv4/IPv6 support Compliant, using BIRD
Route Server config posted on web Compliant
NOC 24×7 Compliant
NOC Member Access Procedure Compliant, members have 24×7 email and phone noc access
Monitoring 24×7 Compliant
Outage Notification Compliant
Public Member List Compliant, List to be updated as members join
Total sum of Incoming/Outgoing traffic Compliant
Website Compliant
Peering Contact Compliant, PeeringDB