CIX, pronounced "kicks," is the oldest ISP organization in the U.S. It was present at the creation of the first peering agreement and still maintains a core routing function at PAIX. Today, CIX represents ISPs on national and international issues.

Update: CIX.org went bankrupt and its URLs were bought by an organization representing WorldCom, AOL, Verizon, eBay, Cable & Wireless, Teleglobe, and Earthlink.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [April 20, 2001]

In the beginning, the Internet was just a loose federation of autonomous networks. Keeping the Internet unconstrained is a big part of what CIX does today, only on a global basis. Just like the exchange played such a critical role in interconnecting its three founding members back in August 1991:

• CERFNet - Now part of AT&T IP Services
• PSINet
• and AlterNet - Now part of UUNet

The original architects of CIX agreed to exchange traffic without regard to type, be it commercial, research or educational—without settlements. The CIX router was installed in Santa Clara and managed by PSINet in order to facilitate traffic moving from one network through another.

Other founding members leased private lines from their networks to the CIX router. ANS was one of those leased line users, which is when a problem arose—clients of the peering partners were gaining access to the CIX network without paying its $7,500 membership fee for exchange services. CIX attempted to filter out non-member traffic but stopped, after a compromise was achieved, whereby ANS set up a commercial version of its institutional root, dubbed ANS CO+RE, which was allowed to join CIX for free.

Barbara Dooley, President of CIX, explained that the core of the dispute involved policy issues, namely acceptable use policies. "These were academic networks but they had no AUP," Dooley said. "It was reasonable that they wanted to exchange traffic with commercial networks."

When PAIX in Palo Alto (Palo Alto Internet eXchange) went online, CIX moved its router to PAIX and became one of the first customers of PAIX.Net, which is currently a subsidiary of Metromedia Fiber Network. Although ISPs continue to join CIX to gain access to the router, since 1996 the router has become a secondary focus for CIX, and the primary activity is ISP advocacy.

CIX today
CIX operates on membership fees and settlements from its router program. Members can also contribute for specific additional projects. One such member, the USISPA , has done so to act as a lobby for ISPs fighting H.R. 2420. But CIX pursues initiatives at both domestic and international levels.

When it comes to global issues, CIX works with several international organizations including:

• International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
• Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
• Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) telecom working group APECTEL
• and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

Through these international advocacy groups, CIX champions the development of open telecom markets in order to promote non-discriminatory terms of access for ISPs. CIX is working with other national and regional organizations to advocate on specific issues. For example, the Council of Europe late last year issued its Draft Convention on Cyber-Crime.

The draft was widely opposed For example, the Internet Law Journal noted that the proposal would tie up courts for years:

"In what may lead to potential lawsuits on privacy grounds, Article 14 (Search and Seizure of Stored Computer Data) gives the governments of respective states the authority to search or similarly access a computer system or storage device to conduct criminal investigations or proceedings. Measures that can be taken by authorities include:

"Seizing or similarly securing a computer system or part of it or a medium in which computer data may be stored;

1. To make and retain a copy of those computer data;
2. To maintain the integrity of the relevant stored computer data;
3. To render inaccessible or remove those computer data in the accessed computer system. (Article 21(4))

"These measures can be taken without immediately informing the person in charge of the computer system (Article 21(6))."

CIX's statement, which was submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice, offers valuable insight into CIX's stance on all international legislation:

Dooley said CIX strongly proposes that the experts amend Article 14 to limit the search and seizure authority and protect innocent third parties like ISPs and consumers from unnecessarily broad exercise of police powers.

"ISPs need to understand how global policy making works," Dooley said. "Some forget that decisions in Europe can effect business in the United States."

Along with international cybercrime initiatives, Dooley noted that CIX is and ISP advocate closely involved issues being resolved at the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

"We've been involved in the process since 1995," Dooley said. "CIX is well aware the dangers from splitting the root of DNS or the extinction of ICANN. We may dislike aspects of it but we have a commitment to participate in the process as best we can."

Dooley noted that fundamental ICANN issues concern addressing rather domain names. For example, will IPv6 succeed, are we running out of IP addresses, will ICANN choose to map all phone numbers worldwide to IP addresses? All are significant issues that CIX advocates for its ISP members, in close alliance with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Home front
CIX also lobbies the Federal Communication Commission and the Congress on behalf of ISPs. Its current hot topic is H.R. 2420, a bill that is about to make a repeat performance before U.S. Lawmakers. Should be bill become law, it would allow RBOCs to provide nationwide data services, outside of their normal LATA service areas.

Of course, issues on the home front also include copyrights, gambling, intellectual property, and unsolicited commercial e-mail—commonly known as spam.

The unifying theme for CIX is ISP liability. Dooley said that if ISPs are held liable for end-user activities on their networks, small independent ISPs will be a thing of the past, because they do not have the financial resources to defend their operation on an individual basis. But collectively, small ISPs can fight the "good fight," through CIX.

At the state level, Dooley said, CIX supports efforts by state ISP organizations, but those organizations often lack resources. She carefully noted that there is "some correlation between paid staff and the success of state ISP organizations in Washington, Texas, Florida, Virginia, and California," which were hotbeds of the so-called cable open access movement, among other issues.

In addition to its lobbying efforts, CIX regularly files amicus briefs in state law courts on subjects that could affect ISPs. The secret of CIX's success is to never stop moving, because there is always a new issue down the road where independent ISPs need a friend, and CIX says it will be there ready to champion their cause.

— End

 

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