LINX Award Presented to NIX.CZ and CZ.NIC to Recognise Route Server Technology Development
The London Internet Exchange (
http://www.linx.net) is pleased to announce that its Conspicuous Contribution Award has been presented to Ondrej Filip and his colleagues at NIX.CZ and CZ.NIC following their outstanding work on the BIRD route server project.
Route servers are designed to allow multilateral peering across an Internet exchange point (IXP). In LINX's case this means that new members can quickly start exchanging traffic with other members by setting up a single BGP session to the route server. This streamlining of the process can be particularly important to smaller networks that may not have the resources to manage a large number of bilateral peering arrangements.
LINX members and prospective members have been particularly interested in BIRD because of its ability to quickly realise the benefit of a connection to the exchange. Networks can then immediately start to exchange traffic with other members as soon as the LINX connection is live.
BIRD is an open source route server platform which has proved to have been of great benefit to LINX and other European IXPs. It is a fully functional dynamic IP routing daemon primarily targetted for UNIX-like systems.
LINX CEO, John Souter, said: “There's no doubt that BIRD is an important step forward in route server technology and we are very happy with the enhanced reliability it offers us at LINX. Multilateral Peering saves networks a considerable amount of time in peering negotiation because with a single agreement, a network can arrange peering with a group of peers all at once instead of negotiating with each party individually."
Mr Souter added: “The Conspicuous Contribution Award is presented to an individual or organisation who have demonstrated a commitment to the development of LINX and to the industry as a whole. This makes it a perfect opportunity for LINX to publicly thank everyone who has worked so hard on the BIRD project.”
BIRD began life as a university project at the Faculty of Math and Physics at Charles University in Prague before going into full development under the support of CZ.NIC Labs at the end of 2008. The BIRD team now consists of Ondrej Filip, Libor Forst, Pavel Machek, Martin Mares and Ondrej Zajicek.
The award was presented to Ondrej Filip by LINX Sales & Marketing Manager, Richard Yule, at the NIX.CZ Working Group in Prague on 10 May 2010.
