A day in the life of the Internet: Paris

PARIS, JANUARY 19 -- If you want to visit the Service for French Internet Exchange (SFINX) in Paris, make an appointment in advance, state your purpose, and don't forget to bring your passport. Although SFINX is operated by Renater (Réseau National de télécommunications pour la Technologie l'Enseignement et la Recherche, France's national telecommunications network for technology, education and research), hands-on management of the exchange is subcontracted to France Telecom SA and housed in a France Telecom building where the strictest security measures are enforced.

While SFINX is hardly a household name, the exchange is currently responsible for carrying some 70 percent of the Internet traffic generated in France. The team that makes this possible works in something of its own network, connecting three locations: Renater has its office on the Rive Gauche in the 13th arrondisement -- not far from the Gobelins factory where Louis XIV ordered most of the tapestries and furniture for his new palace at Versailles -- but the exchange is physically located on rue de la Banque, between the Paris stock exchange and the Palais Royal. Remote monitoring of exchange traffic is handled in the France Telecom building at a third location. But in the heart of Paris where racks of routers sit on white square tiles that cover a false floor, those without an appointment are often turned away. Behind locked doors on rue de la Banque, a guard sits behind the thick protection of security glass and keeps the passport of each person who enters for the duration of the visit.

Within the France Telecom building itself, SFINX is split up among two floors to accommodate the two different services that SFINX offers: hosted and managed. Those ISPs who opt for a managed contract pay for the use of a 10M bit Ethernet switch from Cisco Systems Inc., which Renater configures for the peering agreements that the customer requests. France Telecom houses all of SFINX's managed clients on the seventh floor, where no one but France Telecom personnel are allowed. Hosted customers, housed on the ground floor, supply their own router and gain pre-authorized access privileges to the SFINX location in order to install, configure and maintain their own equipment. Hosted ISPs have a choice between a 10M bits-per-second Ethernet link or a 100M bits-per-second Fast Ethernetlink. All hosted ISPs monitor their own traffic, but Renater also monitors everyone's traffic (in addition to supervising the work that France Telecom does for them) with quality-control applications that it wrote in-house, explained SFINX Operating Director Franck Simon.

A hosted connection at SFINX starts at 40,000 francs (US$7,080) per year (costs can increase based on how much space the ISP monopolizes within the router bay) while the managed service starts at 85,000 francs per year.

Located in Paris' second arrondisement, the exchange is monitored in two shifts: 7.30 in the morning until 7 in the evening, and then 7 in the evening to 7.30 in the morning. The daytime shift is manned by a minimum of two engineers and it covers SFINX's busiest traffic time. Things run well enough that there is little to do on SFINX's behalf, one casually dressed technician said, other than keeping an eye on the routers' green lights and on the SFINX customers who come from time to time to maintain their equipment. When it comes to emergency situations, SFINX customers who have the managed service can call the exchange's maintenance team (France Telecom) at any time of the day or night. Hosted customers can call Renater during business hours, or they can access their equipment at the SFINX site at around the clock. When Renater started SFINX in 1994, it had one switch and three managed customers. A second switch was added in 1996, and the third Cisco switch came in 1997. Today, some 36 ISPs connect to SFINX; Renater declined to give the network's capacity other than to say it could accommodate as many as 60 ISPs. SFINX's sales and international director Sabine Jaume said that many more IPSs are hooked into SFINX via some of the larger ISPs who are SFINX customers.

France Telecom monitors traffic for managed customers with VistaView from InfoVista Corp. and OpenView applications from Hewlett-Packard Co. All hosted ISPs monitor their own traffic, but Renater also monitors traffic (as well as supervising the work that France Telecom does for them) with quality-control applications that Renater wrote in-house, Simon explained.

For the time being, the equipment in place is sufficient to handle all of SFINX's needs. But with an eye to the future, Renater plans to launch SFINX 2 later this year -- both to allow for growth, but also to respond to customer needs. Specifically, other telecommunications companies that compete with France Telecom can not bring their own lines into the France Telecom building that houses SFINX -- they have to lease a line from the incumbent telecom provider. In order to get around this constraint, to accommodate more customers and to offer redundancy to existing customers, Renater is building a second SFINX. SFINX 2 may also host equipment other than routers, Simon added. Sometime this year, SFINX 2 is scheduled to be available. Whether or not it will use Ethernet or another technology such as ATM depends on customer demands, Simon said. The service provider and location for SFINX 2 are out for bid and have not yet been chosen. But there are still plenty of Parisian neighborhoods left for the housing of ISP traffic.

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SFINX overview

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