FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Jump to: Port Cost · Free Ports · Route Servers · Media Support · BYOT · SONIX Transceivers

How much does a port cost?

Nothing! All ports are currently free. No setup cost, no monthly recurring cost.

Note

Think of the port price as the price to allocate a port in our equipment to you as a user. Usually this cost is quite high on many Internet Exchanges, but not on SONIX.

Wow, is everything really free?

Compared to a conventional Internet Exchange, then yes.

However, as you may know, extra costs to connect to your port may occur outside our control. For example, certain locations require a one-time fee to cover our sponsors ODF cost, and as usual you need to check with your datacenter sales contact what they charge to provide you with the fiber connection to our port.

Finally, if you require specific optics that we do not have in stock you need to pay our procurement price. Don’t worry, we have plenty of 100G and 10G modules to go around - and even if your specific optic is not in stock, we have excellent and cost effective suppliers, or you can simply mail a suitable module to us and we will be happy to use it.

What sites require a one-time cross-connect setup fee?

We try hard to find solutions that make everything free, but at some sites we cannot currently reach all the way. At these sites the sponsor will charge a per-port fee that we have to pass down to the user.

  • Digital Realty Stockholm - 5740 SEK (~€500)

Do you have Route Servers?

Yes, we do and encourage all peers to connect.

Our current route servers are:

LocationASNIPv4IPv6
SONIX Stockholm #1AS61229185.1.215.12001:7f8:117::6:1229:1
SONIX Malmö #1AS61229193.201.148.1292001:7f8:117:2:0:6:1229:1

We are currently working on deploying route servers to other sites as well as adding redundancy in the Stockholm location.

What best practices do you recommend?

We recommend:

  • Ensure you are compliant with our rules.
  • Setting the BGP timers to a 3-second Keepalive and 9-second Hold. This helps in the event of a forwarding failure.

What MTU is used?

We use MTU 9000.

Do you allow Transit peering over the IX?

As long as it’s settlement-free peering. E.g. free IPv6 transit is OK.

Which media do you support?

Media support differs by site. The table below shows our standard supported options.

OpticRLKGIXNSK1SK3KN7SK2CHSHG5VG4
400GBASE-LR4
400GBASE-FR4
200GBASE-LR4
200GBASE-FR4
100GBASE-LR1
100GBASE-FR1
100GBASE-CWDM4
100GBASE-LR4
40GBASE-LR4
25GBASE-LR
10GBASE-LR
10GBASE-SR
Site legend: RL = Obenet Riverlake, KG = Obenet Kista Gate, IXN = Digital Realty STO1, SK1 = Equinix SK1, SK3 = Equinix SK3, KN7 = Stokab KN7, SK2 = Equinix SK2, CH = City Hosting, SHG5 = Gothenburg (Gothnet DC Marieholm, Gothnet DC Backa), VG4 = Malmö Vastergatan 4.

Having trouble choosing? 100GBASE-CWDM4 is a good choice as 100G equipment is easy to come by and we have plenty of modules in stock. So many modules in fact that we are offering them free of charge.

Require something else? As long as it is between 10G-400G chances are that we can find a solution that fits. Contact us!

Bring your own transceiver (BYOT) allowed?

Yes! If it’s QSFP28 or QSFP+ compatible. For 400G we support QSFP-DD.

Got any transceivers I can use in my own equipment to connect to SONIX?

Yes! We have 100GBASE-CWDM4 we can give you free of charge, and we are happy to provide other transceivers at cost.

Why do you have sites that are invite only?

It boils down to what connectivity we can manage to secure from our sponsors. If a site is known to have large networks, we need to be selective on which networks we on-board.

Want to help? Have a look at our donation page to see what kind of equipment we need to make the site better.

Can I use your metrics for my own monitoring?

Absolutely! We expose a Prometheus-compatible API at https://metric.sonix.network/api/v1/.

Let us know if you end up using it, we would love to learn if people find it useful.