[PDB Tech] RIPE NCC IXP Tools Hackathon: Pinder

[Charles Gucker]

Hate to top post here as well, but wouldn't this just be a WebUI for
Peering Manager?

https://github.com/inex/IXP-Manager/wiki/Peering-Manager

Charles


On Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Matthew Walster <matthew at walster.org> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> The weekend before RIPE73, RIPE NCC held an IXP Tools Hackathon, and an idea
> we came up with was a system to facilitate peering.
>
> It's not a matchmaking service -- you don't get suggested possible peers,
> you don't submit any sensitive data -- it just facilitates peering.
>
> I'm sure you've all received emails from other networks... Perhaps it came
> from a @gmail.com address, perhaps it just had their IP address at an
> exchange without telling you which exchange it came from, perhaps this peer
> is only responsible for a couple of Megabits per second of traffic and the
> effort required to setup this peer is disproportional to the benefit your
> network would gain from it.
>
> That's why Pinder came around -- Tinder for Peering.
>
> The idea is that if there is a desired peering relationship between two
> networks, and you're happy to just configure some sessions rather than enter
> into a commercial agreement, Pinder would be the middle man. You would
> submit the request via either a basic Web UI or an API, the other network
> would either be notified or periodically check their outstanding requests,
> and if they are willing to peer, both sides are told to configure a session.
> Once both sides indicates sessions are configured and established, the
> request is then deleted (rather than persisting in a database) so as to
> prevent any data security issues in the future.
>
> We knocked up a brief slide deck to explain a little better:
> http://accel.waffle.sexy/pinder.pdf
>
> Our example code is at: http://github.com/dotwaffle/pinder
>
> A brief description of the project is at: http://peer.sexy
>
> I would love it if this could be integrated (probably with entirely new
> code) into PeeringDB, taking advantage of almost all networks having valid
> accounts and fairly accurate data on which exchanges they are at.
>
> Is this something the PeeringDB board would consider? Is this something
> networks are interested in seeing from PeeringDB? Certainly on the of the
> other Hackathon teams (the peerme team, partly from Facebook, who I know
> have just subscribed to this list to hear this discussion) are interested in
> integrating with it as soon as possible, rather than providing yet another
> one-sided crazy web form that prospective peers have to fill out.
>
> Here's some discussion points I thought of:
>
> 1. Does PeeringDB want to be that facilitator? Does it want to be a third
> party service?
>
> 2. If so, how is authentication/authorisation performed?
>
> 3. Also, if it isn't a function provided by PeeringDB, do we want a new
> field in the ASN record that has an endpoint for a particular protocol
> (preferably via https rather than on raw TCP) so people can design their own
> tools against it and the communication becomes decentralised?
>
> 4. If it is taken on by PeeringDB, how much metadata wants attaching to the
> communication? Should it just be "accepted", "rejected", "contact me" as we
> have suggested, or would a messaging field be appropriate? If that was the
> case, does that put PeeringDB in an awkward position?
>
> 5. If the primary consumable was an API, with a basic Web UI on top for
> those unwilling to build on top of it, how do we make sure the private data
> stays private?
>
> 6. Assuming PeeringDB was chosen as the "right place" to store this project,
> is this likely to gain any traction anytime soon? Do we need volunteers to
> help implement it? Is this even something that can be considered a separate
> module that perhaps we want to have Open Source from Day One?
>
> Anyway, enough waffle from me... I'd be interested in hearing people's
> thoughts.
>
> Matthew Walster
>
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