starlink ixp peering progress

One of the things I learned today was that starlink has published an
extensive guide as to how existing BGP AS holders can peer with them
to get better service.

I am curious if there is a way to see how many have peered already,
how many they could actually peer with?, and progress over time since
inception.... what would be the right tools for that? This is pretty
impressive for peering so far:

Is there a better email list to discuss ixp stuff?

Well, for some basic overview you can use CAIDA AS rank.

You can use it directly, or you may try my (more user friendly)
frontend for it: http://as-rank.uu3.net/?as=14593

Or this?

The best way I’ve found (and it is indeed rather incomplete) is to have a BGP feed going to something like QRator from that AS (or a downstream AS) that then performs analytics on the BGP feed. Starlink is unlikely to have BGP customers, so that makes it a bit more difficult.

https://radar.qrator.net/as/14593/ipv4/neighbors/peerings

Or this: https://bgp.tools/as/14593#peers

Personally I find bgp.tools to be the friendliest…

I realize that this thread is turning into an Me too! type thread, but it does seem useful to share which tools work best for each of us…

W

One of the things I learned today was that starlink has published an extensive guide as to how existing BGP AS holders can peer with them to get better service.

Yes, essentially every AS does this. The ones that follow best-practices tend to be pretty uniform:

https://pch.net/peering

https://peering.google.com/#/options/peering
https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/peering/

Starlink’s peering policy is straight-forward and follows best practices. Then there are ones that get a little further afield, some of which can get kinda unusual in their fine-print:

https://www.verizon.com/business/terms/peering/

I am curious if there is a way to see how many have peered already?

Well, if Starlink operates a looking-glass, sure. Or you can derive an idea, albeit an incomplete one, from public data. If any national communications regulators are paying attention, they may have placed a regulatory requirement on Starlink to make this public data, though it might have to be dug out of regulatory compliance filings, and might not be up-to-date.

how many they could actually peer with?

That you’d need to script, though many people have. We have an internal tool that tells us that about our own network, and I suspect pretty much every network large enough to have a dedicated peering team does likewise. If you were to write such a tool for nonspecific use, we have public datasets that would show you who potential peers were at each IXP, and what routes / how many addresses they were advertising at each IXP… Obviously if you’re learning Deutche Telekom’s routes in Frankfurt and Munich, it matters somewhat less whether you also peer with them in Karlsruhe, assuming they’re advertising the same routes everywhere, though it’s still good. If they’re doing regional announcement, you might need to peer with them in different location to “collect the whole set” of their routes. That’s not so common now, though it was a fad for a while, maybe fifteen years ago. I haven’t tried to quantify the degree of regional announcement lately… that’s a good small project for a student who wants to learn about routing and interconnection.

And progress over time since inception.... is there a tool for that?

I think you’d have to throw together your own tools for that, or derive it from public data such as the routing archives that we, RIPE, and Route-Views maintain.

Is there a better email list to discuss ixp stuff?

The two I know of are ixp-discuss@pch.net and ixp-discuss@itu.int. Both are pretty quiet, though both have very helpful people on them.

                                -Bill

One of the things I learned today was that starlink has published an extensive guide as to how existing BGP AS holders can peer with them to get better service.

Yes, essentially every AS does this. The ones that follow best-practices tend to be pretty uniform:

https://pch.net/peering

https://peering.google.com/#/options/peering
https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/peering/

Starlink’s peering policy is straight-forward and follows best practices. Then there are ones that get a little further afield, some of which can get kinda unusual in their fine-print:

https://www.verizon.com/business/terms/peering/

I am curious if there is a way to see how many have peered already?

Well, if Starlink operates a looking-glass, sure. Or you can derive an idea, albeit an incomplete one, from public data. If any national communications regulators are paying attention, they may have placed a regulatory requirement on Starlink to make this public data, though it might have to be dug out of regulatory compliance filings, and might not be up-to-date.

how many they could actually peer with?

That you’d need to script, though many people have. We have an internal tool that tells us that about our own network, and I suspect pretty much every network large enough to have a dedicated peering team does likewise. If you were to write such a tool for nonspecific use, we have public datasets that would show you who potential peers were at each IXP, and what routes / how many addresses they were advertising at each IXP… Obviously if you’re learning Deutche Telekom’s routes in Frankfurt and Munich, it matters somewhat less whether you also peer with them in Karlsruhe, assuming they’re advertising the same routes everywhere, though it’s still good. If they’re doing regional announcement, you might need to peer with them in different location to “collect the whole set” of their routes. That’s not so common now, though it was a fad for a while, maybe fifteen years ago. I haven’t tried to quantify the degree of regional announcement lately… that’s a good small project for a student who wants to learn about routing and interconnection.

And progress over time since inception.... is there a tool for that?

I think you’d have to throw together your own tools for that, or derive it from public data such as the routing archives that we, RIPE, and Route-Views maintain.

Is there a better email list to discuss ixp stuff?

The two I know of are ixp-discuss@pch.net and ixp-discuss@itu.int. Both are pretty quiet, though both have very helpful people on them.

                               -Bill