Important HKIX Announcement on New Charging Model

HKIX was established in April 1995, using spare resources of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.  At the onset, HKIX could be offered as a free-of-charge service to the early participants with moderate network traffic.  But over the years, with the growth in the demand for Internet traffic exchange and e-business, we have now grown into a critical Internet infrastructure covering 190+ autonomous systems and exchanging 250+ Gbps of data at peak time.  To support such a huge network, the configuration of HKIX has also evolved from a primitive coaxial cable to Ethernet switches and to the now top-end equipment and technologies.

Obviously, it is not possible to leverage the network economy of the whole Hong Kong with virtually no cost.  In 2005, we introduced the penalty-based cost-recovering model with a hope to curb abuse and to recover most of the cost.  After eight years, we find that this extremely conservative model is not sustainable in front of the exponential growth in network traffic volume and growth in the demand for new connections.  Together with the higher expectation of all the participants in the service, it calls for a continuous upgrade of the HKIX infrastructure in capacity and resilience.  This requires substantial periodic capital investment and operating expenses.  It is unfair and impossible for the university to subsidize the operation indefinitely.  In fact, we have to do a major upgrade in 2013 to cope with the ever-increasing demand and to improve our resilience further with site resilience at the core.

In order to make the HKIX operation truly self-sustained in long term and to prepare for the continuous growth in the future while we could keep HKIX as a not-for-profit service, we have no choice but to implement a full-cost-recovery model, i.e. simple port charge model.  This charging mechanism is actually the industry norm, which is fair and consistent for all participants.

Simple port charge model will be implemented starting 01-JAN-2013 for all new participants and new connection requests. For existing participants with no change of connections, the existing terms and conditions will not change until 30-JUN-2013.  To further ease the transition, we shall still provide to each participant up to 2 free FE/GE ports in total (counting all ports at all HKIX sites) until 30-JUN-2014.  After 30-JUN-2014, all ports will be chargeable.

The new port charges (applied to all HKIX sites) will be:

FE/GE: US$120/port/month (no one-time connection charge) 10GE: US$1,000/port/month (plus one-time non-refundable connection charge: LR – US$2,300; ER – US$7,000)

(Exchange Rate: US$1=HK$7.8)

We strongly believe the charges laid down are on the low side when compared to other parts of the world.  Nevertheless, we shall review the charges periodically and uphold our principles of fairness and consistency.

If you have any queries regarding this new arrangement, please feel free to contact our core team at hkix-core at itsc.cuhk.edu.hk.

We thank you for your understanding and wish you’ll have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

HKIX Team