New Zealand Internet Exchange.

This is where ISP's used to peer and exchange traffic. NZIX was in the Waikato, on the ground floor of the Computer Science Department of WaikatoUniversity.

While NZIX was the end point for NZGate international access, which was handed to TelecomNewZealand in 1996, it was operated independently by WaikatoUniversity. Like other IXes, the equipment on it was owned by IX participants, individually "peering" with each other.

Unlike WIX & APE, NZIX started out using various IGPs for exchanging routes, including RIP, OSPF & IGRP, the latter left over from a decade of Tuia operations. IGRP was well past its use-by date by this time (not supporting classless routing, and having ghastly convergence times), but there were legacy Cisco boxes out there that couldn't manage OSPF (the IGP of choice). The less said about those exchanging routes via RIP the better. The IGP approach worked OK as long as NZIX was the only place where overseas carriers were peering, bit it started to get ugly as soon as peering points (both public such as APE & WIX, and bilateral arrangements such as those between Clear and Telecom) started to multiply.

Completly replaced by APE and WIX mid 2001.

NZIX was fully decommissioned at 10:45am on 26th of August 2002, and was dismantled an hour later without leaving any physical evidence of existance. The last router was a Cisco 4000 series router, HNCR1, owned by Netway Services (part of TelecomNewZealand).