An Internet Exchange based in Auckland was the main topic of discussion at a meeting today between KCCS, Iprolink and ICONZ.
The steps necessary to set up an exchange were discussed along with various technical issues on bandwidth sharing, routers, news feeds and news servers.
All agreed that the present situation of purchasing bandwidth from various Telcos was not an option in the forseeable future and establishing an exchange with direct international connections would be highly desirable.
Such an exchange could still have connections from Telcos so that ISPs would have a choice of using a particular telco services or using a direct international link.
Another function of the exchange would be a central location for maintaining a full usenet news feed and distributing it as required to ISPs.
Although such an exchange should be a separate entity and not dependant on any one ISP some immediate plans were put forward to connect the three ISPs together so that cooperation over importing usenet news could commence as soon as possible. This would enable all three ISPs to disconnect from the NZNews group's newsfeed at Waikato University and allow a full newsfeed to be imported and distributed.