[ixpmanager] IXPManager: Two customers on one port

[Michel Lanners]

Hello Roland,

We have similar configurations here. I have to add that we do not generate any configurations directly within IXP Manager, but rather access some information in the DB and use that as input in our own config generation workflows. YMMV.

As “remote” IXPs, we have both the simple 1 IXP, 1 VLAN scenario (we take their VLAN and we give them ours), as well as the other scenario where each remote connected network comes in on an individual VLAN, and each of our connected members with the remote service to the other IXP, has an individual additional VLAN for that.

In the first case, we just declare the remote IXP’s VLAN (let’s say IXP2 in your example) in IXP Manager, and if appropriate, add that service on our member’s port. End of the story. The uplink port to IXP2 is also configured in IXP Manager, equally with both our Peering VLAN and IXP2’s. No individual statistics, of course.

In the second case, we use something similar to what Barry has described: we use an additional dumb switch just for VLAN mapping, where each individual remote VLAN representing our own Peering VLAN, gets terminated on an individual Access port, facing a regular Peering port on our normal IXP infrastructure, both connected with a cable. Individual VLANs representing the remote IXP’s Peering VLAN, destined for our own connected networks, get implemented as Private VLANs in IXP Manager, making it clear that these are not for general use. Thus, each of our members subscribing to remote IXP3 gets an individual, additional, “private” VLAN on their port, shared between them and the remote IXP uplink port.

In both cases, there is no impact on generated RS configs, because you wouldn’t manage any RS config of the remote IXPs on your end. There would be an impact on generated switch configs if you used IXP Manager for that, but I would suppose that our way of implementing it would just work.

Cheers

Mich

Michel LANNERS
COO at LU-CIX Management G.I.E.
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> On 23 Apr 2026, at 14:50, Roland Christanell | Telmekom via ixpmanager <ixpmanager at inex.ie> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> Thank you for your help. Unfortunately, this does not seem to solve my problem, so I’ll try to explain it in more detail.
>  
> IXP1: This is our IXP
> IXP2: A different IXP in a different physical location
> IXP3: A different IXP in a different physical location
> IXP4: A different IXP in a different physical location
>  
> We have Layer‑2 transport to all other IXPs, allowing us to carry their peering LANs and, in turn, provide ours to them. At the moment, only one of these IXPs has more than one customer; this is the reason for my request regarding “one port with two customers,” although in theory there could be more than two.
> The second issue is the following: if customers on our IXP want to connect to one of the other IXPs (IXP2, IXP3, IXP4), I need to configure the corresponding VLANs for those IXPs on the customer-facing port.
> We configure our switches manually, so there is no need for templates on the IXP Manager side. However, I would like to achieve the following:
>  
> Each customer should only see their own traffic on the port connected to our IXP.
> A correct and clean way to model the VLANs of the other IXPs in IXP Manager, without breaking the automatic Route Server or Nagios configuration.
>  
> I hope this clarifies the situation and that there is a suitable solution.
> Thank you in advance for your time and help.
> Best regards,
>  
> Roland Christanell
>  

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