Interconnection services offered to consortium members by TOP-IX are designed to allow “peering agreements” to be implemented for the exchange of Internet traffic using BGP4 (IPv4) and BGP4+ (IPv6) protocols.

Interaction between connecting bodies is performed directly without any technical or financial involvement by TOP-IX. The Consortium is solely responsible for providing the configurations required by interested members on the transmission structure.

Unlike the standard concept of Internet Exchange (normally involving the setting up of one single location where access equipment is placed), the infrastructure offered by the Consortium to its members is geographically distributed over the territory.

The distributed infrastructure covers all the main towns in the Piedmont region in addition to the localities of Ivrea, Aosta, Pont Saint Martin and Milan. The aim is to aid broadband diffusion and therefore the development of each specific local area by bringing access to the service closer to persons and parties interested.

Distributed platform flexibility makes it possible to configure logically separate networks at Level 2, geared towards implementing public free peering agreements and set up in such a way so as to exclude reciprocal transit and/or private peering agreements which are implemented on dedicated (private) VLANs where reciprocal visibility is only for parties interested in the agreement itself.

Starting at october 2008, thanks to Lyonix and TOP-IX agreement, it’s possible for TOP-IX members to implement peering with Lyonix members.

Starting at fall 2009, thanks to VS-IX (Padua) and TOP-IX agreement, it’s possible for TOP-IX members to implement peering with VS-IX members.

TOP-IX is a Euro-IX member

According to a strategy of evolution toward the InterCloud Exchange, since the beginning of 2011 TOP-IX also introduced the possibility of interconnection between IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) Clouds. Interoperability is achieved through the configuration of logical Level 2 connections on the same technology platform that provides peering services.