Technical Requirements

Scope

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

Motivation

Members' use of the UAE-IX 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 UAE-IX 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 UAE-IX 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 UAE-IX port shall have the same source MAC address.

2.3 Frames forwarded to UAE-IX 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 UAE-IX 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 UAE-IX ports shall only use IP addresses and netmasks (prefix lengths) assigned to them by UAE-IX. 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 UAE-IX peering LAN directed broadcast address shall not be automatically forwarded to UAE-IX ports.

3.3 Standard IP MTU size = 1500

4. Routing

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

4.2 AS numbers used in BGP4(+) sessions across the UAE-IX 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 UAE-IX peering LAN shall not be advertised to other networks without explicit permission of UAE-IX. All routes advertised across the UAE-IX network shall point to the router advertising it unless an agreement has been made in advance in writing by UAE-IX and the members involved. All routes to be advertised in a peering session across UAE-IX shall be registered in the RIPE or other public routing registry. Members may use more than one ASN for their UAE-IX 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 UAE-IX member when permission has been given by the receiving member either:

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

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

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