Horizon
Broaden your network with multi-metro peering.
Bridging the gap between the largest internet hotspots in Europe. By bringing ERA-IX to more and more locations we can enable more networks to make use of ERA-IX to exchange internet traffic, use transport services and connect to cloud providers. We are convinced this can be of value to members, especially those present at one of our metros.
Our Responsibility
We are aware and understand remote peering is known to be at the root cause for many latency and performance issues. For this reason Horizon requires explicit actions/agreement from participants to get set up. This ensures protection for anycast/multi-metro networks against unexpected latency, hairpins and other kinds of suboptimal routing.
Configurator
Remote peering is both powerful and risky at the same time, so it should be handled with appropriate diligence. This is where the Configurator will come into action, where you can configure where your routes should, can and must not go. Configuration made in the portal will immediately take effect on the network. We're enabling the configuration of peering through policies which you can configure for each location ERA-IX is present at.
BGP Communities
As the tool affects routes in both directions, full route control is not possible trough BGP communities. Horizon does tag informational communities on routes. To implement selective peering yourself, you can use per-asn communities or tag on permissive and participating communities. Note this only controls advertised routes and might lead to unexpected behavior.
Route Policies
The following route policies are available in our portal.
| Policy | Participate | Permissive | Disabled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action | Peer with networks at the selected location. | Permit peering from the selected location, but do not establish them. | Don't exchange routes with the selected location. |
| Used when | Single-homed network, within metro You want to peer with as many networks as possible. Recommended for most members. |
Multi-homed network, outside metro You don't want to peer with remote edges of other multi-homed networks. |
Content Delivery, Anycast You only want to peer at specific geographic locations. |
| Peers with Participate | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Peers with Permissive | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (Change to Participate) | ❌ No |
| Peers with Disabled | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No |
** Policies only apply to the route-server. For bilateral sessions please review the location of your peers on the member list.
New Locations
When new locations are added to ERA-IX, everyone within the same geographic scope will automatically be set to Participating for the new location. Horizon will not automatically be enabled for remote locations. Geographic scopes where peering will be auto-enabled can be defined as circles of ~100km around each major metro (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, etc) or whichever is closer.