A presentation given at APRICOT 2015 during the Peering Forum (1) session.

1. Peering in Japan 2015
Seiichi Kawamura
BIGLOBE Inc.
as2518.peeringdb.com
copyright (c) 2015 BIGLOBE Inc. 1

2. The history of Internet in Japan
• https://www.nic.ad.jp/timeline/en/
copyright (c) 2015 BIGLOBE Inc. 2

3. copyright (c) 2015 BIGLOBE Inc. 3
BIGLOBE
March 1994
The first
IX in Japan!
1997
JANOG

4. Internet eXchanges in Japan now
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Major city exchange
Global exchange
Equinix
Regional exchange
Akita IX, Okinawa IX, and others…
Inter-region (MPLS-IX)
distix (dissolved)
Community operated

5. Distribution throughout the country
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Tokyo:
- JPNAP/JPNAP2
- BBIX
- JPIX
- Equinix
- dix-ie (nspixp2)
Osaka:
- JPNAP
- BBIX
- JPIX
- NSPIXP3
- Equinix
Niigata:
- Echigo-IX
Akita:
- Akita-IX
Nagoya:
- BBIX
- JPIX
Fukuoka:
- BBIX
Cable Landing Stations
Okinawa:
- OIX
Only major landing stations shown

6. Traffic in Japan
copyright (c) 2015 BIGLOBE Inc. 6
Source: http://www.soumu.go.jp/main_content/000316564.pdf
Broadband (FTTH, CATV, DSL, FWA) download traffic at
2,892Gbps (1.27x from past year)
Mobile traffic is 621Gbps (1.48x from past year)

7. Major Tokyo Peering Facilities and
Exchanges
• KDDI Otemachi (a.k.a Telehouse Tokyo)
– JPIX
• Equinix TY2
– EIE, JPNAP, JPIX, BBIX
• NTT Data Otemachi
– BBIX, JPIX
• Arteria Com Space I
– BBIX, EIE, JPIX
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8. Where are all the ISPs?
• Many regional ISPs seem to be present at
ComSpace I with a few in MDA Otemachi
• Many large ISPs are still present at NTT Com
Otemachi (a carrier building), and may have a
POP or 2 at the previous page
copyright (c) 2015 BIGLOBE Inc. 8
DISCLAIMER! This is how I view this and may not describe the whole truth

9. Issues with selecting a POP in Tokyo
• Which facility should I go to?
– TY2 has all the IXPs, but it’s full (and quite small)
– Many local ISPs do not have presence in TY2
• Which IXPs should I connect to?
– 3 ‘carrier neutral’ but telco owned IXPs + Equinix
– There’s no ‘the one IXP that everyone connects to’
• Dark fiber?
– NTT East owns a great share of the fibers, but you will not
be able to buy from them directly in most cases (unless
you’re a local registered service provider and have the
proper resources to contract with them)
– MDA, KDDI, Arteria, KVH, and some others may be able to
provide dark fiber
copyright (c) 2015 BIGLOBE Inc. 9

10. Interesting operational practices
• MD5 still popular for BGP sessions
• AS-PATH filtering still popular on peering sessions,
and…
– Some people announce as-path updates to IXP
participants’ mailing list
• Everyone is keen to announce planned maintenance
notices
– Some send announcements to IXP participants’ mailing list
– If you don’t announce it, you may get e-mails asking if
there was an outage
• Best to avoid maintenance on the 1st business day of
the month
– Mobile data package allowance renewed
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11. Interesting operational practices
• English peering requests are sometimes ignored
– But this has improved drastically in the past few years
• BGP BFD quite popular
– IXPs are metro fabrics on multiple buildings
– Local content providers require short downtime, since
games communicate with servers real time
• IXPs do not handle LACP (yet)
• Most IXPs have a glimmer glass type fiber
switcher
• Each IXP has unique route server features
– To be able to control who to advertise what prefix etc
copyright (c) 2015 BIGLOBE Inc. 11

12. Terminology
• “LOA” not so common
• Terminology “Private peer” (pronounced
purai-bait-o pia) familiar but PNI not so
familiar
• “Settlement” word not common. “Free peer”
or “Paid peer”
copyright (c) 2015 BIGLOBE Inc. 12

13. Peering Ops communities
• JANOG and regional NOGs
– Open to everyone. JANOG usually January and July
• Peering in Japan BoFs (began 2012)
– 1-2 times a year at JANOG or Internet Week(usually
November)
– Google groups list. Limited to IX participating AS
operators only
• CloudIX group
– BBIX participants working together under NDA
• IXP users’ meetings
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Unfortunately most are Japanese language focused

14. Challenges for Japan today
• Facilities: power, space, and network concentration
balance not so good
• CLS concentration and CLS to POP fiber
• Fiber and 10G connections across facilities still quite
expensive around most areas
• Communication with non-Japanese speaking operators
• More presence in Osaka recently, however it has its
own fiber, peering facility challenges
copyright (c) 2015 BIGLOBE Inc. 14