Dear peers,

We're happy to share with you some technical news for the second quarter of 2025!

News

Introduction of Segment Routing and EVPN

As part of France-IX's backbone optimisation strategy, we are actively working on deploying Segment Routing and EVPN technologies. Segment Routing was extensively validated in our dedicated lab environment during last weeks, before being successfully rolled out across all routers, with no impact to customers. Several migrations are scheduled for the near future.

EVPN testing is still ongoing on the lab environment and delivering promising results. The first maintenance windows for EVPN deployment are expected in the coming weeks, stay tuned!

Multipass: A simplified way to access remote France-IX regions

France-IX launched the Multipass service last quarter, allowing peers to reach remote peers in any city where France-IX operates an IXP, with no additional cost. A dozen peers have already activated the service.

As announced, legacy Inter-IXP users in the Lyon/AURA region will be migrated to Multipass by the end of Q3 2025 to ensure a consistent service and alignment with best practices, particularly regarding route servers implementing BGP Roles and “Only To Customer” (OTC) routing policies (RFC 9234).

Explore the details and get this option activated : Multipass — France-IX

AMS-IX Coming Soon: Connectivity to AMS-IX from all France-IX locations

France-IX and AMS-IX will interconnect their platforms to expand remote peering opportunities. By the end of the summer, it will be possible to access the AMS-IX peering LAN, from all cities where France-IX operates IXPs: Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Paris, and Toulouse.

This interconnection is fully bidirectional: networks connected to AMS-IX will also be able to reach any of the France-IX peering LANs, without requiring any physical presence or infrastructure in France.

Based on a protected wave infrastructure between Paris and Amsterdam, the service is delivered through a simple 802.1Q VLAN sub-interface on your existing port, no additional hardware or cross-connect is required. This offers a cost-effective, fast, and easy way to expand peering reach.

To ensure full transparency, BGP communities will be available on route servers to clearly indicate the originating IXP of each remote peer.

Deployment of Apple caches in Lyon/AURA region

As a continuation of our content delivery strategy initiated with Microsoft MCC caches last quarter, France-IX is now expanding regional content availability in the AURA region with the installation of Apple caches. With the installation of these two caches, traffic has significantly increased in Lyon.

Google VPP launch

For the past few months, Google has been launching a new service to access public Google Cloud resources: Verified Peering Partner (VPP). Thanks to its fully redundant Layer 3 infrastructure, France-IX met the eligibility criteria and has become a Silver VPP Partner with the installation of two dedicated 100G ports in Marseille. This initiative is part of our ongoing efforts to enrich our peering portfolio and adapt to the evolving interconnection models introduced by key Cloud players.

New customer portal now available

We're happy to announce the launch of our new customer portal: https://portal.franceix.net.

This revamped interface comes with several improvements, including:

• A consolidated view of all your services, now also covering housing (rack space, power, cross-connects),
• Self-service user management directly within the portal.

More features will be added in the coming months.

Nationwide On-Site Support Coverage with TIBCO

To strengthen our operational capabilities, France-IX has selected TIBCO as its new technical partner for on-site interventions across its PoPs, enabling efficient support for both planned maintenance and incident response.

Three regions have already been activated, with more to follow, paving the way for full nationwide coverage.

Importantly, TIBCO will operate under the supervision of France-IX’s 24/7 engineering team, ensuring that interventions are fully aligned with our quality standards, processes, and operational strategy.

Scaleway InterLink available via France-IX

We are happy to announce the partnership with Scaleway to offer access to their InterLink service directly through our infrastructure. A dedicated 100G port has been deployed, enabling France-IX customers to connect to Scaleway’s VPCs, by using a simple 802.1Q sub-interface on their existing France-IX port.

This is a continuation of our broader initiative to foster digital sovereignty and enhance local interconnectivity. Additional partnerships with other French and European cloud providers are being actively developed to expand this ecosystem across all France-IX locations.

Rationalization of PoPs in the AURA region and removal of legacy Huawei devices

• Freepro Rock (Lyon) and Cogent Grenoble: These PoP have been closed end of Q2-2025. The few remaining clients have been supported in finding migration solutions, either through resellers or by offering alternative PoPs where France-IX operates in the AURA region.
• Huawei Equipment Decommissioning Near Completion: France-IX has almost completed the removal of all legacy Huawei equipment from its infrastructure. This initiative enables us to build a more homogeneous and operationally efficient network, improving maintainability, simplifying day-to-day operations.

Route Servers (RS) update

As part of ongoing discussions and best practices shared within the Route Server Working Group at Euro-IX, France-IX is aligning its operations with the current community recommendations regarding BGP attributes:

• End of support for “Extended BGP Communities” (RFC 4360, “route-target style”). These attributes are considered legacy and present limitations.
  • Support has already been removed in Paris, Lyon, Lille and Toulouse.
  • We are waiting for the last peer to finish updating their configuration for Marseille.
  • As previously announced, support will be totally removed by end of September 2025.
• End of support for the legacy 32-bit to 16-bit ASN mappings used with standard communities (RSASN:64700...64899). These mappings have not been updated for several months and will be fully deprecated.
  • Support has already been removed in Marseille (and never implemented in Lyon, Toulouse, Lille and Bordeaux).
  • We are waiting for the last 4 peers to finish updating their configuration for Paris.
  • As previously announced, support will be totally removed by end of September 2025.
• “Large BGP communities” (RFC 8092) are the recommended way of signalling between peers and route-servers.
  • Most features have already been transitioned to large communities, and the remaining ones will follow.
  • Additional details and timelines will be shared as the migration progresses.
  • On the long-term, they are supposed to be the only way of signalling.
• More generally, the usage of standard BGP communities will be progressively reduced over the next few months and years.

We recommend reviewing your configurations and policies accordingly to ensure compatibility with these upcoming changes.

Figures

A few figures about Q2-2025:

New customer ports (including upgrades) Q2-2025: More than 1.1 Tbps of capacity connected!

• 10G : 9 ports
• 100G : 11 ports
• 400G : 0 port

Availability during Q2-2025:

• Lille: 100% 
• Lyon: 100%  
• Marseille: 100% 
• Paris: > 99,999% 
• Toulouse: 100% 

NOC service Q2-2025:

• NOC tickets handled: 99

Outages:

• Paris - 29th of April 2025: er3.kdi, a network edge device connecting 5 customers unexpectedly rebooted, causing a service interruption of approximately 10 minutes for these 5 customers. We are currently investigating this abnormal behavior in collaboration with the vendor to determine the root cause.

Upcoming projects and operations

• Route reflector deployment and progressive EVPN activation on peering LANs.
• Additional partnerships with French cloud providers will be available to promote digital sovereignty while enhancing local interconnectivity.
• Enhancement on customer portal.

If you want more technical information, you can follow our large panel of twitter accounts (@as51706 for Paris, @as42064 for Marseille, @as43100 for Lyon, @as47184 for Toulouse and @as62228 for Lille).

Happy peering with us,

France-IX technical team