The Namex Consortium and the TOP-IX Consortium have signed an agreement for the provision of the Time as a Service (TaaS) service, marking an important step forward in the collaboration between two of the leading Italian Internet Exchange Points (IXPs).

The official announcement was made today, The official announcement was made today, Wednesday 19 June, from the stage of the Veneto leg of the Fiber Telecom Wholesale Winery Tour 2024.

Time as a Service

The TaaS service, based on the Precise Time Protocol (PTP) and Network Time Protocol (NTP), on the infrastructures of Namex and TOP-IX, guarantees greater security compared to similar services delivered via satellite systems (e.g., GPS). This is a fundamental requirement for mission-critical applications such as broadcasting, smart grid power networks, telecommunications, and high-frequency financial trading.

The service was developed by TOP-IX in collaboration with its member, the National Institute of Metrological Research (INRIM).

Sharing of services

“This agreement with Namex allows us to extend the reach of our TaaS service, making an extremely reliable and secure time synchronization solution available outside our network as well,” comments Andrea Casalegno, Executive Director of TOP-IX. “We are excited to collaborate with Namex to advance innovation in the networking sector.”

Maurizio Goretti, General Manager of Namex, echoes this sentiment: “The collaboration with TOP-IX for the provision of the TaaS service represents a concrete achievement, the first, of the federation we established with them last year and moves towards the mutual sharing of services in a federated, secure, high-performance, and neutral environment.”

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The new board of directors of the TOP-IX Consortium confirmed Davide Calonico, Head of Division ‘Quantum Metrology and Nanotech’ at INRIM, as president, and Carla Gaveglio of CSI-Piemonte as vice-president.

The Board of Directors was renewed and increased from 13 to 15 members. We thank outgoing board members Guido Boella, Juan Carlos De Martin and Giancarlo Zambonie and extend our best welcome to the new board members: Emile Chalouhi, Roberto Leoni, Marco Mellia, Angelo Saccà and Alessandra Sponchiado.

L'articolo Davide Calonico: president of the Consortium for third term sembra essere il primo su TOP-IX.

At the latest Euro-IX forum, TOP-IX presented a proposal to federate the Fabrics of geographically separated IXP’s. The proposal takes shape following the positive results generated by the experimentation of federating Internet Exchanges and Cloud Providers, as an enabling technology for extending cloud resources across different administrative domains.

The idea has garnered a lot of attention as it would allow individual IXP’s to offer their local members services available on a European and beyond scale. Furthermore, the solution presents an alternative to proprietary solutions, mitigating the effects of economic and technological lock-in.

The proposal aims to implement the concept of a Service Composer, which would allow users, accessing from one IXP’s service portal, to access and benefit from services in another separate but appropriately interconnected IXP.

The initial entities involved alongside TOP-IX are AMS-IX, DE-CIX, and LINX, with the goal of opening up to as many IXP’s as possible. If you are interested in receiving more information, you can write to staff@top-ix.org.

L'articolo Proposal for the Federation of IXPs and Cloud Providers. sembra essere il primo su TOP-IX.

The TOP-IX Consortium, as a Day-one member of Gaia-X and founding member of Structura-X, the Gaia-X lighthouse project involving 28 industrial entities from 10 European countries with the common goal of building a federated infrastructure for the European cloud, participated in the recent Gaia-X Summit 2022.

TOP-IX at Gaia-X Summit 2022

As part of Structura-X, together with Engineering Ingegneria Informatica Spa, Aruba SpA, Politecnico di Torino, CSI-Piemonte, IONOS and DE-CIX, TOP-IX implemented and presented a PoC of an Internet Exchange and Cloud Service Provider federation as an enabling technology for extending Kubernetes clusters across different administrative domains.

The Internet Exchange federation project has attracted considerable interest from a number of European stakeholders and proves to be an important driver in propelling TOP-IX and Internet Exchanges toward a new paradigm, in which the network platform becomes an ecosystem for delivering distributed, scalable, and resilient cloud services. Adoption of the Federation Services framework will also ensure compliance with Gaia-X governance and enrich the range of cloud and connectivity services that TOP-IX, its consortium members and other IXs can deliver and consume on the federated infrastructure.

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Data artist Jer Thorp told us that a geological map can become a work of art and migration data can be read through an urban installation (in this specific case made in Times Square). The results that emerge from predictive models that analyze large masses of data are not always easy to communicate to decision makers, explained Vittoria Colizza, director of the EPIcx lab: the risk is to be seen as “modern Cassandras.”

And then there is the infrastructure over which this data travels. Francesco Bonfiglio, CEO of Gaia-X, helped us imagine what the Old Continent’s infrastructures might look like in the not-too-distant future, and Eleni Diamanti, deputy director of the Paris Center for Quantum Computing, explained the importance of quantum cryptography in protecting the transmission of information.

Journalist and entrepreneur Massimo Temporelli provided the loom within which the narrative of Connections was woven. The event has been staged at OGR on the occasion of the 20th birthday of the TOP-IX Consortium. It was a journey into the world of innovation and digital data, with the intention of understanding their value and impact, through the lens and languages proper to technology, science and art.

An opportunity to explore the possible futures of a world in which data, connections and algorithms play a crucial role in shaping the experience of reality, from different perspectives. And so we talked about privacy and health, the impact and sovereignty of data, its protection and the evolution of the idea of digital citizenship.

Different topics, linked by a single thread, which guided the large audience until the end of the event, closed by the electronic music collective of SPIME.IM. With their performance Zero, they provided a reading of the present, through data, images, and music.

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ISO/IEC 27001 is a widely known standard that defines requirements for an information security management system (ISMS), together with more than a dozen standards in the ISO/IEC 27000 family. Their use enables organizations of all types to manage the security of assets such as financial information, intellectual property, employee details or information entrusted by third parties.

TOP-IX has certified the compliance with the standard of its Internet Exchange, or interconnection activity, through a verification process that was conducted by CSQA involving the company staff engaged in this process.

TOP-IX’s business is evolving in line with market trends where many of the networks involved go beyond the “classical” Internet Service Providers but also belong to businesses and players in the financial world.

The certification states that data management in TOP-IX is carried out to the highest standards, ensuring that current clients and Consortium members as well as new parties can find a reliable partner in TOP-IX.

The issue of information security, along its three main axes, confidentiality, integrity and availability, is at the heart of the cybersecurity discussions that have become more and more relevant in the European arena in the last decade.

L'articolo TOP-IX achieves ISO27001 certification sembra essere il primo su TOP-IX.

The Genoa Data Internet Exchange (Ge-DIX) consortium was founded in September by the City of Genoa with Fastweb, BBBell, Liguria Digitale, Retelit, Rocket Way and the TOP-IX Consortium. It is an innovative project that aims to achieve the ambitious goal of making the City of Genoa an international node for data exchange interconecting Service Providers through the creation of an Internet Exchange Point (IXP) that can operate a stete of the art Interconnection Platform.

Speakers at the presentation of Ge-DIX included Mayor Marco Bucci, Ge-DIX President Luca Beltramino, BBBell Founder and President Enrico Boccardo, Fastweb CEO Alberto Calcagno, Rocket Way CEO and CTO Paolo Barigelli Calcari, TOP-IX Executive Director Andrea Casalegno, Liguria Digitale PA Business Unit Director Riccardo Battaglini, Retelit CEO Federico Protto, and Genoa Ambassadors Network in the World Coordinator Giuseppe Franceschelli.

Ge-DIX’s Internet Exchange Point will provide better connectivity to citizens and businesses in Genoa and Liguria, with important benefits for business productivity and people’s daily lives.

It will be possible through the direct exchange of Internet traffic between telecom operators, who will be able to interconnect with each other without having to pass through one or more third-party networks, with benefits in terms of improved bandwidth, data security, and rapid international data exchange available to businesses and governments. Direct interconnection also avoids the need for data to travel through other cities (and potentially to other continents) to get from one network to another, thus reducing latency and making Internet services more immediate and efficient.

The Ge-DIX consortium has a 10-year term and is a strategic hub for the digital transformation of the Genoa area, fostering its social, economic and digital culture development. It is also a decisive tool for improving the use and delivery of services for businesses, citizens and public administration.

«It also has a symbolic value for us to have contributed to the birth of Ge-DIX precisely on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of TOP-IX – explains TOP-IX Executive Director Andrea Casalegno –. It will be a pleasure to put our experience at the service of an IXP that will play an important role in accelerating the competitiveness of the Ligurian territory and is destined to become a key hub in the international telecommunications landscape, thanks to the realization of submarine links to connect Europe and Asia».

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TOP-IX network freeze is scheduled from next Dec 20th 2021 to Jan 07th 2022.
For any new or upgrade request before the holiday season, please contact us asap at amministrazione@top-ix.org.

Happy Holidays.

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Cellnex is the main independent wireless telecommunications infrastructure operator in Italy and the largest independent telecommunications infrastructure operator in Europe.

From today, Cellnex is a new member of TOP-IX Consortium.

Cellnex Italia provides many services in multi-operator mode, a key concept for developing wireless networks and services, optimising investments and ensuring a more rational and efficient use both in operational terms and for the environmental impact of the capillarity of the existing and potential network.

L'articolo The TOP-IX Consortium welcomes the new member Cellnex sembra essere il primo su TOP-IX.

The need for multilingual streaming events is increasingly pressing for those who have to manage events aimed at an international audience, for those who speak to several countries at the same time or have offices around the world.
We have faced this request in many events and we have adopted various solutions to meet it.

Multilingual streaming: a single player with movie (recorded) in English and subtitle selector for up to 12 languages

In the conferences of dealers of companies in the Stellantis group, in which the EMEA sales manager illustrated the 2021 business plan, there were 12 connected countries.

We have been provided with the video file and related subtitle files. Than, we have developed a subtitle publishing system to manage the selection of 12 languages in a single player. This way, the video stream did not stop when changing languages.

One player with video (recorded) and simultaneous translation selector in 6 languages

Another company was in need for simultaneous translation of the film. They gave us 6 different films, each with their own voice over.

So that, it was possible to choose the player’s preferred voice-over, with a language selector.

One player for each language (live events with simultaneous translator)

The multilingual streaming requested by the Berlinale, the Berlin Film Festival, included a player for each language requested: German and English.

We have created two distinct players, one for the German part of the site and one for the English part of the site. The audio streams were routed to the player in the corresponding language.

L'articolo How we manage multilingual streaming sembra essere il primo su TOP-IX.