Paul Cairney

Biographical Information

During over a decade in Equinix’s Network group I have been involved in design, deployment and operation of both IXP and ISP platforms across 5 continents, including numerous acquisitions and resulting network integrations. Prior to this I spent several years wearing both NetOps and SysAdmin hats at a SaaS-based emails security provider, ran a small webhost and started a company providing LAN gaming events.

In 2019 my regional role became part of distributed team managing Equinix’s Global Peering & Transit strategy and over the last 18 months this has involved working more closely than ever with Carriers, IXP’s and the Peering community to ensure capacity was available to cope with the rapid growth in IP traffic..

So while it should not surprise anyone that that the graphs went “up and to the right”, what is truly amazing was all the people behind the AS Numbers who worked tirelessly to ensure the bits kept flowing and who I am especially looking forward toseeingagain with the return to in-person meeting, events and Peering Forums!

Nominee Statement

With an in-depth technical knowledge of IXP and IP network operations, combined with experience in a global role, I hope to bring pragmatic perspective to the MANRS steering committee and help build on the great work so far promoting collective responsibility to avoid the global routing table becoming yet another “tragedy of the commons”.

I remain a vocal advocate of “keeping traffic local” but am increasingly conscious that when highlighting the benefits of peering we must also be clear on the responsibilities it carries, particularly as the mechanics have evolved from paper contracts for dedicated physical ports towards API driven orders for services delivered near instantly over multi-service ports anywhere in the world!

As these barriers to entry come down, I feel its crucial for MANRS outreach to be as broad as possible; raising awareness of “responsible peering” and in particular working with participating IXP’s to reach networks before they have even established their first peering session.

I would also love to see greater use of automation to assist with both validation of new applicants and monitoring compliance of existing participants, providing feedback of areas to improve and a means to reach out for help to do so 🙂

Nominated by: Martin Atkinson (Equinix Inc.)