Other founding members leased private lines from their networks to the CIX router. Barbara Dooley, President of CIX, explained that the core of the dispute involved policy issues, namely acceptable use policies. It was reasonable that they wanted to exchange traffic with commercial networks. Although ISPs continue to join CIX to gain access to the router, since 1996 the router has become a secondary focus for CIX, and the primary activity is ISP advocacy. CIX today CIX operates on membership fees and settlements from its router program.
Members can also contribute for specific additional projects.
But CIX pursues initiatives at both domestic and international levels. Through these international advocacy groups, CIX champions the development of open telecom markets in order to promote non-discriminatory terms of access for ISPs. CIX is working with other national and regional organizations to advocate on specific issues. For example, the Council of Europe late last year issued its Draft Convention on Cyber-Crime . Often these entail activities that might be intrusive relative to the privacy expectations of subscribers.