In attendance:

Bill Reid

Jacques Latour - CIRA (via telephone)

Jeff Klause - CEO Rainy Day/President, Voyageur

Leslie Bester - LES.NET (1996) INC. also representing Swift High Speed by proxy via Evan Shroeder

Jonathan Stewart

Glen Beer - GSC

Hartmut Sager - Auditor

Grant Anderson - Government of Manitoba

Eric Jensen - No Limits

Ron Dellmeier - MRnet

Gerry Miller - MRnet

Jason Rogers - Rogers West

Richard Jones, Sergei Polischuk, Theo Baschak - VOI Networks

Adam Thompson

1.0 Introductions

2.0 Approval of Agenda

3.0 Approval of Sept 25th AGM minutes

4.0 Treasurer Report

5.0 President Report

6.0 Operational Report

7.0 New Business

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1.0 Introductions

1.1 Go around to introduce existing and new MBIX members;

1.2 Member Leslie Bester of LES.NET (1996) INC. confirmed he had been accorded the proxy vote by Evan Schroeder of Swift Internet.

2.0 Adam Thompson (AT) moved to accept agenda, seconded by Jerry Miller (JM), so moved.

3.0 Minutes of the September 2013 duly approved.

4.0 Treasurer’s Report

4.1 Jeff Klause (JK) presented treasurer’s report noting MBIX F/Y is January to December and the AGM should be held In February or March to align with fiscal year;

4.2 Annual returns are up to date;

4.3 The MBIX board of directors is composed of the technical and non-technical members, namely AT, Sean Wallberg, Jacques Latour (JL) and Technical Advisory Committee (TAC).

4.4 There are 4 new members and 10 current members;

4.5 There has been interest in membership from other local providers and MTS, though MTS doesn’t have their own core router;

4.6 Jason Rogers (JR) spoke with Rogers Communications and is running fiber to 167 Lombard;

4.7 JK iterated the province of MB has funding for “projects” but MBIX has not yet received any. After their last meeting with representative Cindy Hodges, the Province agreed to fund MBIX training costs;

4.8 Grant Anderson (GA) specified his department is more operations and Cindy’s department is jobs and training. GA added they want MBIX to attract new members;

4.9 JK concluded the conversation was still ongoing and asked for suggestions.

4.10 AT raised the issue of the term of board member appointments and that appointments be staggered to ensure smooth transition;

4.11 Bill Reid (BR) specified they are back to 2 year positions and the terms are retroactive and restart in January 2015;

4.12  BR pointed out the founders will have served a 2.5 year term;

4.13 JK said an outside audit was completed  and stated the overhead and equipment costs were not sustainable;

4.14 CIRA has sponsored most core equipment and 5 year support contracts and GSC space was committed for another 2 years. Cash is needed for replacing equipment and a budget should be determined;

4.15 Though MBIX has no outstanding debts, the Nexus switch platform will need an upgrade in the next 12 months. JS mentioned he needed CISCO license support as well;

4.16 AT stated using TORIX part of infrastructure without SmartNet has been ok so far;

4.17 GB asked about donated colo space and/or payment in kind? Hartmut Sager (HS said since it’s neither a tangible asset or expense it would not be on the book. JK suggested a $0 invoice to create an audit trail of such things;

4.18 JR asked re: Profit Loss and Balance Sheet/FS for 2013? JR moved to accept, seconded by GB, so moved. HS added assets should neither be inflated or deflated. JL confirmed as per the CIRA finance people, the FS were ok;

4.19 JK thanked HS and invited him to audit 2014 financials as well;

4.20 AT moved to appoint HS as auditor, TB seconded, so moved.

5.0 President’s Report

5.1 BR welcomed new members and stated plans were advancing better than expected. During the Olympic curling there had been a huge peak in usage but no increase in bandwidth;

5.2 CISCO sponsored SmartNet for all Canadian IXs

5.3 LES.NET & RDI presence were due to Hurricane Electric (HE) providing Akamai transit;

5.4 MBIX is thankful for ongoing support from CIRA and 100% Helpdesk for sponsoring the time for Jonathan Stewart (JS) during daytime hours;

5.5 Last August BR met with Calgary IX which is similar to MBIX but has more members but no Akamai cache, their data hive in Calgary is similar to GSC;

5.6 Theo de Raadt had been in town in November for a sponsored evening re: YYCIX and Open BSD with approx. 50-70 people; a discussion ensued regarding the other 7 IXs in Canada including HIX and NBIX, VanIX, with Windsor, QC City and Edmonton on the map for the future.

6.0 Operations Report 

6.1 Jonathan Stewart (JS) presented diagrams of the first year of the switch being turned on and is working conceptually;

6.2 There were 14 active AS ports as of that day;

6.3 Average traffic was 30Mbps and peaked at 150Mbps;

6.4 Support for both IPv4 and IPv6

6.5 Equipment is Nexus 7004 management module and is not port expandable but can add management port;

6.6 Low latency/high capacity BGP routers, IPv.4 PCH root server, dual stack DNS servers from any.servers.ca with PCH providing CO code TLD, DNS etc. Akamai content 10BG port  supports lots of data, NTP servers synched to CMA donate dby CIRA, service available to members, grace period expired;

6.7 Fibre module failed, upgrade switch software for  a permanent fix, 2 days downtime. IP transmission failures and stats disappear, the BGP config is making things happen and MBIX is connected to many parties, some unreliability of transit for Akamai, hard to understand why Akamai can’t reach their node, and can’t be seen on NTT, level 3 etc.

6.8 TAC is not actively troubleshooting BGP issues and whereas there is no solution the issue is uncertain as the complexity will only increase;

6.9 GB asked how will other ISPs help resolve this issue? i.e. ISPs want access to Akamai. JS replied you could have mailing lists etc. GB asked if there should be  a platform for resolving issues? AT suggested training funds should be available from the province and tech people could come together with BGP training;

6.10 JK noted he raised this issue in discussions with the province of Manitoba and noted that MBIX members bring employees with expertise in many important areas. BR advised the TAC should be advised and GB wondered if this meant the TAC would then advise the BoD, and BR agreed the issue was  a little complex. AT suggested a lot of inside info into member network was required but networks must be accessed. JS agreed MBXI will need a few smart people to work together to resolve the issue. GB wondered how MBIX could better use existing membership. AT said a TAC meeting in person would be the best way. JK agreed and suggested moving on from this topic for now;

6.11 JS said a diagram of the network architecture was underway and there were no current capacity issues. JS stated better technical advisement was needed especially regarding BGP. Relations with GSC remain friendly however future facility upgrades might be needed. JS will email TAC and coordinate meeting. GB asked if outside access was possible? 3 i.e. BGP remote access issue if HE is down etc. JS confirmed no reachability issues. RJ of VOI asked whose AS was used and GB specified regardless of routing protocol it would remain unreachable and JS confirmed not reachable during an outage. RJ stated as long as there was mangement access on GSC if MBIX goes down it was ok. JS clarified there was no login access for Akamai and that more technical collaboration was needed. This discussion was concluded by JS stating he would seek more collaboration.

GB put forward the motion to accept all reports, seconded by AT.

Board Positions

Currently BR is President, JK Treasurer and JS head of TAC, respectively.

BR stated elections should be held within the year starting from January (not October).

AT inquired if Board positions would remain retroactive in the future and suggested term could commence in September.

JK confirmed this regulation was not confirmed at the last (first) AGM.

BR suggested AGM should be held in March and positions held until the following AGM.

AT acknowledged continuity is important and asked if there are any objections to the status quo as follows:

        BR, JK and LB will hold 16 month terms, respectively

        AT and GB will hold 28 month terms

No objections were made.

LB asked when terms would expire.and all agreed there would be no elections that day per se and instead to defer to the next AGM in March 2015.

AT suggested positions end on the first of the month following the AGM and that the AGM should be held soon after fiscal year end of December 31st.

JK noted the last AGM was timed to coincide with CIRA’s requirements as well as the launch party.

BR noted a bylaw amendment would be required to change election regulations.

JK moved and AT seconded that elections be tabled until next AGM and all 3 positions would be extended as such for the interim.

Motion passed unanimously.

AT asked if a special meeting of the directors was required? JK and LB agreed a meeting should happen soon to help resolve this issue.

7.0 New Business

7.1 BR CIRA needs a quote re NTP. TB said “it’s close”. GB asked who they were targeting. AT stated jitter is lower than public pool. JS stated latency less by factor of 10 and using NTP server allows easier time keeping on network.

7.2 JL spoke about the promotion of IXs across Canada during the ARIN on the road tour of Canada and the US. BR raised the impending depletion of IPv4 addresses and that they arranged to be in Winnipeg on Sep 11, 2014 at the Fairmont. Speakers, Lunch and and IPv6 presentation would take place involving 1-5 local people i.e. Ron, Shawn Wallberg, BR etc Prizes would also be awarded. BR will forward details end of July/August 2014.

7.3 The EPIC data center construction re; MTS at Waverly and would like to have a second MBIX switch node. David said they were open to it but unsure how to connect the two switches. AT said there are enough MB biz to extend the fabric and want local biz to join IX. JK noted it was all above ground.

JR added Cogent was looking at adding Calgary or Winnipeg to expand in Canada. JL asked if there was a way to estimate the number of eyeballs this would add? BR asked if IXs usually do that. JS stated this was usually public info.

JK asked if there was any other new business and there was not so AT moved to adjourn, seconded by JR and passed unanimously.

Minutes taken by Sonya Kleiman