• “Business day” shall mean Monday to Friday, except official public holidays in France (total of 11 days per calendar year, with 7 to 10 days falling on business days on average).
• Working Hours refers to hours between 10.00 am and 6.00 pm on working days, i.e. from Monday to Friday.
• Non-working Hours refers to times other than between 10.00 am and 6.00 pm on working days, i.e. from midnight to 10.00 am and from 6.00 pm to midnight CET (Central European Time) from Monday to Friday; and any time on Saturday, Sunday and public holidays.
• “Planned works” means maintenance, service configuration, migration or change of any of the peering services provided by France-IX.
• Major Technical Problem refers to an exceptional technical emergency that either makes it impossible for France-IX to provide the Services to all or some of its customers, under standard operational conditions; or that could impact customer security. A Major Technical Problem may require immediate isolation of all or part of the affected Customer’s Connection, or even of the affected Point of Presence.

2.1 Initial connection

As soon as the customer has received its cross-connect within the datacenter where France-IX has a Point of Presence (PoP), France-IX technical Team proceeds to the connection of the customer to its equipment within five (5) business days for 1GE, 10GE and 100GE ports. However, the customer can always specify to France-IX its preferred date for service delivery and France-IX will do everything possible to accommodate such requests.

The customer port is initially placed in the quarantine VLAN. Optical levels and operational checks are done to make sure that there are no errors or default onto the port, and to make sure that no unauthorized protocols are activated or no unwanted traffic is sent. These technical specifications are described on France-IX web site: Network technical specifications

Once the checks are finalized, the port is placed into the production VLAN, so that the date at which such tests are completed and successful is considered as the production date.

2.2 Engineering Design Rules

When a customer is connected with multiple ports onto a same PoP, France-IX splits by default the connection of the customer onto several line-cards, to reduce as much as possible the possible impact of a maintenance or an outage on a card. Moreover, when the datacenter provides multiple Meet-Me-Rooms (MMR), France-IX installs cross-connects on these MMRs, then the customer can select redundant paths to connect its ports. In case the customer does require even more resilience, specific design has to be discussed with France-IX technical team.

Every France-IX equipment installed in one single PoP is powered with redundant power supplies, redundant switch fabrics and management cards, in all PoPs. On some core PoPs, the cabinets themselves are doubled to bring even more resiliency. All edge PoPs are interconnected with at least two (2) other core PoPs, with optical paths that take completely separate paths, in order to minimize the impact of a maintenance or an outage onto a fiber path.

3.1 Change with no contractual implication

If a simple change onto the port configuration is requested, without contractual implication, such as change of MAC address allowed on the port, this change is operated on a 24/7 basis by France-IX NOC, in a delay of four (4) hours (working and non-working hours).

3.2 Change with contractual implication

• If a change on the connection has to be operated, implicating a contractual update such as adding a new VLAN either for private peering or to purchase a Marketplace service, the delay to proceed with the changes, as soon as the contract is updated and signed, is three (3) business days.
• For contractual bandwidth upgrades, if the new bandwidth can be activated on the existing physical port, the upgrade is activated within one (1) business day once the signed contract amendment is received. In case a new port is requested, the delays are the ones mentioned in the 2.1 Initial connection section of this document.
• For contractual bandwidth downgrades, as per the France-IX general conditions of the connection agreement, there is a contractual notice period of 2 months from the customer written notification. During that time, a contract amendment needs to be signed and the new bandwidth is activated either through the existing physical port or through a different port type if required.
• For move such as migration inside a PoP or to a new PoP, a new port is required and the delays are the ones mentioned in the 2.1 Initial connection section of this document.

4.1 Planned Work

All scheduled maintenances and planned works operated by France-IX are announced at least ten (10) business days in advance, unless a major technical or a severe security issue requires an immediate maintenance (see 4.3 Service Outage (detected by France-IX). In all cases, France-IX will use every possible mean at its disposal to minimize the potential impact of such maintenance. The maintenances are excluded from the calculation for the availability of the Service. All maintenances are either announced by our NOC or by France-IX Technical team.

All maintenance tickets shall contain the following information:

• Start date and time of the maintenance
• Expected end date and time of the maintenance
• Expected impact
• Summary and final duration when the ticket is closed

Maintenance having an impact on customer ports are always executed during non-working hours.

4.2 Service Outage (detected by the Customer)

If an issue is detected or suspected by the customer, either on its connection, or on France-IX infrastructure, the incident shall be signaled to France-IX NOC by opening a ticket.

France-IX NOC can be contacted 24/7, either by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (a ticket is automatically generated) or through France-IX customer portal (https://support.franceix.net).

4.3 Service Outage (detected by France-IX)

All outages, incidents, or any degradation of quality of service, automatically generates a trouble ticket to inform France-IX customers.

In case of a major technical issue or in the event of a severe security issue, France IX reserves the right to suspend the Services at any time in order to protect its customers, with a notice period given as soon as possible.

When an issue appears, France-IX NOC does open a ticket for information within one (1) hour of the problem detection (during working and non-working hours). Updates are then sent to France-IX members each time any useful information can be provided, and so until resolution.

All trouble tickets shall contain the following information:

• Start date and time of the incident
• Expected end time of the incident
• Impact
• Summary and final duration when the ticket is closed

4.4 Escalation

Escalation processes are automatically initiated by France-IX NOC, depending on the criticality and duration of the incident.

5.1 Service Availability

The service availability is the total period per calendar year of availability of its infrastructure in one city (all customer ports). France-IX' objective is to deliver to its customers an availability of at least 99,995% per year (non contractual). France-IX is running two IXPs, one in Paris and one in Marseille: the availability is calculated individually, as the IXPs are independent and not interconnected.

The following events are excluded from availability calculation:

• Any force majeure event as described in the France-IX general conditions of the connection agreement;
• The service being modified or altered in any way at the customer’s request;
• Any interruption resulting from defects or failures of the customer’s equipment, customer’s datacenter connection or any facilities provided or operated by or on behalf of the customer;
• Incomplete, inaccurate information provided by the customer to France-IX;
• Any delay or failure in complying with any of the customer’s obligations under the France-IX connection agreement;
• Scheduled maintenances and planned works operated by France-IX.

The service is considered as unavailable when the customer is not able to reach at least 10% of France-IX customers, for a period of time longer than 10 consecutive seconds or the inability to send or receive traffic across France-IX infrastructure.

Every month, the availability is measured, in order to consolidate the annual availability. The total time is measured in minutes.

The availability is measured based on tickets generated by France-IX NOC and on measures collected from the monitoring probes. It is displayed in real time and accessible online at anytime by the customer on the France-IX customer portal.

5.2 Round-trip delay, jitter and frame loss

The objective for France-IX is to deliver to its customers the following target values (non-contractual):

• Frame Loss: <0.05%, average per hour in a 24h period
• Round-trip Delay: <1.5 millisecond, average per hour in a 24h period
• Jitter: <100 micro-seconds, average per hour in a 24h period

For Round-trip Delay, the value indicated is the maximum delay between two PoPs, taking into consideration there can be 80km between two PoPs. France-IX has deployed probes on all its PoPs. Round-trip delay, jitter and frame loss are measured and monitored permanently:

6.1 Customer Portal

France-IX provides access to a Customer online portal: tools.franceix.net.

This customer portal includes weathermaps, information on the traffic volume per PoP, BGP summary, flow statistics, looking-glass and a direct access to the France-IX NOC. Login and password are sent to the peering email address when the service is activated.

Please note that France-IX reserves the right to modify the measurement methods, frequency, systems and tools at any time on its infrastructure, without prior notice, in order to constantly keep us with the technological developments, regulatory frameworks and business requirements.

6.2 Technical reports

Every quarter, France-IX Technical team issues a report, summarizing all the operations run onto France-IX infrastructure, whether they were impacting or not the service availability, in order to be as much transparent as possible. Such reports also include information of outages/incidents when appropriate.