Allowed Traffic Types on Unicast Peering LANs

Note The CAR-IX NOC reserves the right to disable ports that violate the rules below.

To ensure smooth operation of the AMS-IX infrastructure we impose a set of restrictions on what kind of traffic is allowed on the peering fabric. This page gives a summary of those restrictions. For more info, including hints on how to configure equipment, please see the CAR-IX Config Guide.

1.  Physical Connection

1.1 Interface settings

100base  Ethernet interfaces attached to CAR-IX ports must be explicitly configured with speed, duplex other configuration settings, i.e. they should not be auto-sensing.

2.  MAC Layer

2.1 Ethernet framing

The CAR-IX infrastructure is based on the Ethernet II (or “DIX Ethernet”) standard. This means that LLC/SNAP encapsulation (802.2) is not permitted. For more information on the differences, see the Ethernet FAQ, question 4.1.

2.2 Ethertypes

Frames forwarded to CAR-IX ports must have one of the following ethertypes:

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

2.3 One MAC address per port

Frames forwarded to an individual CAR-IX port shall all have the same source MAC address.

2.4 No proxy ARP

Use of proxy ARP on the router's interface to the Exchange is not allowed.

2.5 Unicast only

Frames forwarded to CAR-IX ports shall not be addressed to a multicast or broadcast MAC destination address except as follows:

  • broadcast ARP packets
  • multicast ICMPv6 Neighbour Discovery packets. Please note that this DOES NOT include Router Discovery packets

2.6 No link-local traffic

Traffic for link-local protocols shall not be forwarded to CAR-IX ports.

Link-local protocols include, but are not limited to, the following list:

  • IRDP
  • ICMP redirects
  • IEEE 802 Spanning Tree
  • Vendor proprietary protocols. These include, but are not limited to:
    • Discovery protocols: CDP, EDP
    • VLAN/trunking protocols: VTP, DTP
  • Interior routing protocol broadcasts (e.g. OSPF, ISIS, IGRP, EIGRP)
  • BOOTP/DHCP
  • PIM-SM
  • PIM-DM
  • DVMRP
  • ICMPv6 ND-RA
  • UDLD
  • L2 Keepalives

The following link-local protocols are exceptions and are allowed:

  • ARP
  • IPv6 ND

3.   IP Layer

3.1 No directed broadcast

IP packets addressed to CAR-IX peering LAN's directed broadcast address shall not be automatically forwarded to CAR-IX ports.

4.   IP addressing

4.1 no-export of CAR-IX peering LAN

IP address space assigned to AMS-IX peering LAN shall not be advertised to other networks without explicit permission of CAR-IX.