IXP History Collection: Recording the Early Development of the Core of the Public Internet

[Nishal Goburdhan]

you might find this interesting.

ref:  https://www.conftool.pro/iipc2025/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=69&presentations=show
slides attached.

—n.


IXP History Collection: Recording the Early Development of the Core of the Public Internet
Sharon Healy1, Gerard Best1, Lara Díaz Martínez2

1 Independent Researcher, Ireland; 2 University of Barcelona, Spain

The IXP History Collection is an ongoing project which seeks to record and document histories of the Internet exchange points (IXPs) which form the core of the Internet’s topology. An IXP is the point at which Internet Service Providers and Content Delivery Networks connect and exchange data with each other (“peering”). IXPs form the topological core of the Internet backbone, their histories are inextricably linked to the commercialization of the Internet, and their development is a significant milestone in the global history of media and communications. Efforts should therefore be made to ensure that we preserve IXP histories for future generations.

The main purpose of the project is to collect and preserve networking and IXP histories due to valid concerns that these histories will be lost from the global record unless attempts are made to start preserving them now. In particular, the project is concerned with the fragility of electronic information and born digital documents, records, and multimedia, otherwise known as born digital heritage. As a starting point, the project utilizes the Internet Exchange Directory which is maintained by Packet Clearing House, an intergovernmental treaty organization responsible for providing operational support and security to critical Internet infrastructure, including Internet exchange points. The PCH IX Directory is one of the earliest organized efforts to develop and maintain a database for recording and tracking the establishment, development and global growth of IXPs.

The project then focuses on documenting IXP histories through as many online sources as possible (e.g., websites/pages, reports, journals, magazines/newspaper articles, old emails on public mail lists). The project relies on the use of web archives as a research tool for tracing IXP histories, as well as a preservation tool using the Save Page functions in the Wayback Machine and Arquivo.pt.

In this presentation we discuss our approach and methodology for developing the collection and making it available online as a reference resource, and we offer an overview of the importance of using web archives for documenting and preserving Internet and IXP histories. By presenting our approach, we hope to offer a case study that demonstrates how web archive research can be integrated with traditional research methods (Healy et al., 2022), and promote more widespread use of web archives as research tools for historical inquiry, and the long-term preservation of digital research (Byrne et al., 2024).
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