How to Maximize Your Use of TorIX
We strongly urge peers to use the route servers, though sometimes that is not possible for a variety of reasons. However, the route-servers will ensure you reach 85% of TorIX peers with a minimum of effort. We also encourage you to request bilateral (direct) peering across the Exchange with any organization which you have need to, even if they are on the route-servers. Our Portal lists contact information for every peer, their peering status and has a link to PeeringDB for further information. You can also sort the list of members by organization type, which makes it easy to find the kinds of organizations you may want to peer with.
If your network is an “eyeball” network (such as an ISP, educational institution, enterprise, etc.) we recommend that you request direct BGP peering with Amazon, Dropbox and Microsoft, who are not on the route-servers but have open peering policies. Limelight Networks is a content distribution network which is worth peering with, if you meet their minimum traffic level. Though Google is on the route servers, it is worthwhile to peer with them directly if you meet their minimum traffic levels because they will send more traffic your way than via the route servers alone. Direct peering with Akamai and Stackpath for content delivery, and Cloudflare for content and DNS. Twitch is connected to our route-servers but does not currently route traffic to RS participants, so we recommend that peers request direct peering with them, which is particularly important for ISP’s with residential customers.
If your network delivers content (such as a CDN, Cloud, IPTV, hosting, or colocation) we recommend you peer with the route servers for the widest possible reach. You can view our members list in the portal and sort it to determine who uses the V4 and V6 route servers, and who does not. Request peering with those organizations that do not use the route servers for complete coverage.
We recommend peers set a higher BGP local-preference for prefixes received from TorIX, rather than leaving it at the default BGP local-preference. This will ensure that traffic which originates or transits via your network uses TorIX to deliver traffic to TorIX peers rather than over your transits.
To influence ingress traffic via TorIX, you can use strategies like offering a shorter AS path for prefixes you advertise to TorIX. Prepending your ASN to prefixes advertised to your transits will help accomplish that.
Finally, if you have IPv6 prefixes, be sure to take advantage of your IPv6 peering LAN assignment and (at least) peer with the V6 Route Servers.