Allied Properties sale of their data centre portfolio to KDDI includes 151 Front Street W., the site of TorIX which is the main Internet Exchange Point for the country. While that’s not necessarily an issue, I kinda figured it was at least a little bit notable but I’ve not seen it mentioned aside from an investment context.
Unfortunately, it seems like it’s less consequential than it should be because Bell Canada apparently still refuses to peer at TorIX and only connects to other ISPs through the US which means that eg. if I’m on Rogers in Toronto and you’re on Bell, any communications between our computers have to flow through American controlled systems even though we’re in the same city because that’s how Bell chooses to have things set up.
Whereas, for pretty much everything else in Toronto, it’d move between networks via TorIX. Which is now in a building owned by a Japanese company instead of a Canadian REIT.
Huh. The NSA must be sending them a metric fuckload of money to be doing that (or, alternately, subsidizing their interconnection through ISPs in the USA). Given the relative size of Bell to all other Telcos/ISPs in Canada, they must have more than 50% of Canadian internet traffic, of which the other 50% is who we’re communicating to…