Technical requirements

Scope

These Technical requirements (TR) define the ways in which you may or may not make use of the AqabaIX services. This document will be regularly reviewed and revised in the light of operational experience to ensure maximum protection of service to AqabaIX members. Subsequent versions of this document are effective after 10 working days of having been posted upon AqabaIX website.
 

Motivation

Members' use of the AqabaIX network shall at all times conform to the relevant standards as laid out in STD0001 and associated Internet STD documents.
 

1. Physical

Ethernet interfaces attached to AqabaIX ports shall be explicitly configured with duplex, speed and other configuration settings and shall not be auto-sensing.
 

2. MAC Layer

2.1 Frames forwarded to AqabaIX ports shall have one of the following ethertypes

  • 0x0800 - IPv4
  • 0x0806 - ARP
  • 0x86dd - IPv6

2.2 All frames of a service forwarded to an individual AqabaIX port shall have the same source MAC address.

2.3 Frames forwarded to AqabaIX ports shall not be addressed to a multicast or broadcast MAC destination address except as follows:

  • broadcast ARP packets
  • multicast IPv6 Neighbour Discovery (ND) packets
  • if explicitly allowed for that port (e.g. multicast service)

2.4 Traffic for link-local protocols shall not be forwarded to AqabaIX ports except for the following:

  • ARP except proxy ARP
  • IPv6 ND

These link-local protocols include but are not limited to the following list:

  • IRDP
  • ICMP redirects
  • IEEE802 Spanning Tree
  • Vendor proprietary discovery protocols (e.g. CDP)
  • Interior routing protocol broad/multicasts (e.g. OSPF, IS-IS, IGRP, EIGRP)
  • BOOTP/DHCP
  • PIM-SM
  • PIM-DM
  • DVMRP

2.5 ARP traffic shall not exceed 20 pps per port/vlan.

2.6 Standard Ethernet MTU size = 1554

3. IP Layer

3.1 Interfaces connected to AqabaIX ports shall only use IP addresses and netmasks (prefix lengths) assigned to them by AqabaIX. In particular:

  • IPv6 addresses (link & global scope) shall be explicitly configured and not auto-configured
  • IPv6 site-local addresses shall not be used

3.2 IP packets addressed to AqabaIX peering LAN directed broadcast address shall not be automatically forwarded to AqabaIX ports.

3.3 Standard IP MTU size = 1500

4. Routing

4.1 All exchange of routes across the AqabaIX network shall be via BGP4(+).

4.2 AS numbers used in BGP4(+) sessions across the AqabaIX network shall not be from range reserved for private use.

4.3 All routes advertised shall be aggregated as far as possible.

4.4 IP address space assigned to AqabaIX peering LAN shall not be advertised to other networks without explicit permission of AqabaIX. All routes advertised across the AqabaIX network shall point to the router advertising it unless an agreement has been made in advance in writing by AqabaIX and the members involved. All routes to be advertised in a peering session across AqabaIX shall be registered in the RIPE or other public routing registry. Members may use more than one ASN for their AqabaIX peering provided that each ASN presented shares the same NOC and peering contact details.

5. Forwarding

5.1 Traffic shall only be forwarded to a AqabaIX member when permission has been given by the receiving member either:

  • by advertising a route across the AqabaIX network (directly or via the routeserver)
  • or explicitly in writing

5.2 Traffic shall not be routinely exchanged between two AqabaIX ports owned by the same AqabaIX member.

If you have any questions regarding the technical requirements, please to not hesitate to contact us