[ixpmanager] IXP Manager Developer Support

[Nick Hilliard (INEX)]

Haider Ali wrote on 10/07/2019 09:25:
> This project is for the IXP at Islamabad, Pakistan. They do many things 
> manually. We have the funding to make that IXP the software-defined 
> exchange point.

before you go down the road of implementing an SDN based IXP, you should 
have a clear understanding of what you mean by SDN (it means wildly 
different things to different people), what set of problems you're going 
to solve by implementing SDN and - most difficult of all - what set of 
problems your particular choice of technology is going to create, and 
how these problems compare against the problems you would run into with 
other bridging mechanisms (e.g. STP, VXLAN, VPLS, etc).

If your ultimate intention is to build an IXP which is partially or 
fully automated then it would be important to understand what you plan 
to automate.  Things that you might want to automate could include: 
switch configs, ZTP, monitoring and alarming configs, measurement 
configuration, integration with primary web site, provisioning 
customers, deprovisioning customers, implementation of route servers, 
quarantine systems, integration with billing systems / middleware and a 
large pile of other things besides.

It would be important to note that your choice of network building 
blocks / bridging mechanism at the IXP would only be a small part of 
this set of choices, and not even the most important part.

For reference, there are very few IXPs which have automated their 
processes to the point that they program MAC addresses on a per-port 
basis. This isn't a statement of whether this is a good or a bad thing 
to do: it's just an observation that of all the things that are 
important for running a successful IXP, programming MAC addresses on 
individual switch ports is quite far down the priority list.

Nick