unmetered.exchange

What It Is

Unmetered.Exchange is a non-profit Internet Exchange Point (IXP) located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Its goal is to provide a low-barrier, easy-to-join public Ethernet exchange fabric for local Canadian networks. It is not a CDN in the traditional sense: it does not provide web caching, static asset delivery, or application-layer acceleration. Instead, it improves routing paths between participating networks, reduces latency, and increases the efficiency of local interconnection bandwidth through BGP peering.

Core Capabilities and Coverage

Its access locations are concentrated in and around Vancouver. The text mentions areas such as Burnaby, New Westminster, Campbell River, and Coquitlam. The currently specified switches are located in the 6th-floor Meet Me Room at Harbor Center and the TechFutures YVR1 data center. Supported connection media include 1Gbps CAT5e/CAT6 copper, 10Gbase-LR single-mode fiber, and 100Gbps connections. Harbor Center only accepts fiber cross-connects, and 100Gbps requires users to provide their own Cisco QSFP28 optical modules.

Routing and Features

Exchange takes place over a shared Layer 2 Ethernet fabric, with participants exchanging routes via BGP. The Route Server is based on BIRD and uses ARouteServer for automated configuration. The text explicitly states support for strict IRRDB filtering and prefix limits to reduce invalid routes entering participants’ routing tables. It also provides a Looking Glass, a PeeringDB page, and runs an AS112.net route server. Common CDN capabilities such as DDoS protection, WAF, edge computing, and caching nodes are not disclosed.

Pricing and Access Requirements

As of July 2019, the platform did not charge port fees, and 1Gbps ports were also free of port charges. However, users still need to obtain a physical cross-connect to the switch themselves, and the relevant cross-connect fees may be charged by the data center where they are located. Access requirements include having an ASN, IPv4/IPv6 address space from a registered RIR, an IRRDB routing policy, accurate PeeringDB AS-SET information, and compliance with Layer 2 protocol restrictions.

Pros, Cons, and Who It’s For

Its advantages include non-profit operation, low port costs, IPv4/IPv6 support, simplified multilateral peering, and relatively standardized route filtering mechanisms. It is suitable for ISPs, cloud providers, hosting providers, content networks, or experimental networks looking for public interconnection in Vancouver. Its drawbacks are that coverage is highly localized and it cannot replace a CDN; ordinary websites cannot directly obtain global acceleration, security protection, or optimized access from China through it.

China Access and Alternatives

The text does not provide information on access from mainland China, payment methods, ICP filing, or China-based nodes, so its China access status can only be assessed as unknown. If the requirement is acceleration for websites in mainland China, CDNs with mainland nodes and ICP compliance capabilities should be prioritized. If the requirement is global web acceleration, traditional CDNs such as Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai, and AWS CloudFront can be compared.