AMS-IX B.V.

History & Background

1994

In the Science Park in Amsterdam a layer-2 shared infrastructure had been formed between (academic) organizations to exchange traffic. In February 1994 it was internationalized to exchange traffic with CERN in Switzerland and other ISP's were allowed to connect. The name AMS-IX was first used.

1997

The at time twenty connected Internet Service Providers and Carriers founded the AMS-IX Association. Founding members are: Surfnet, NLnet, AT&T EMEA, Unisource, BT, KPN Qwest, XS4All, Global One, Euronet, EUnet, Wirehub, Belnet, RIPE NCC, Demon, IXE/PSI, Telecom Finland, IBM GN, A2000, UUnet/MCI, GTS Europe (Ebone).

1998

The Multicast VLAN is implemented for test-purposes and the first IPv6 tests are done. The volume of all connections iincreased from 4.5 Tbyte September 1997 to 26.3 Tbyte September 1998 or some 81 Mbit/s on average over the month.

2000

The Association forms the AMS-IX limited company, AMS-IX B.V., and holds all its shares. All assets are transferred to the company. Surfnet continues to manage the overall operations of the exchange, technical management is subcontracted to SARA. The Gigabit Ethernet service is launched. The 100-th member is connected.

2002

The operations management of the exchange is in-sourced to the AMS-IX Company, a professional NOC is formed. AMS-IX extends the platform to two other sites in Amsterdam, Telecity-II and Global Switch.

2003

AMS-IX becomes the IX with the largest number of connected networks worldwide with 178 members at the end of the year. The total aggregate traffic at December 31st is 22 Gbps.

2004

The platform is migrated from a ring to a double star topology. Photonic switches are deployed by an Internet exchange for the first time. The trunked Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet Services are launched.

2005

AMS-IX becomes the IX with the highest level of public exchange traffic worldwide. The 5-minute average high of the aggregate traffic now reaches 120 Gbps for a total of 234 members.

2006

The GRX peering traffic between the mobile parties is now at the level of the ISP peering traffic in 1997 with an 80 Mbps peak. The ISP peering exchange switches over 1.5 Petabyte a day.

2007

AMS-IX expands to a fifth location at euNetworks and relocates it's core switches to the new location euNetworks and a seperate suite at the existing location Global Switch. Both core switches are upgraded to the MLX32. The total of AMS-IX capacity is over 1 Terrabyte per second.

2008

300, 400, 500! During 2008 AMS-IX reached the point where we had over 300 connected parties using over 400 ports and exchanging well over 500 Gbps of traffic, a minute, during peak moments (based on industry standard 5-minute average). Additionally AMS-IX expanded to its sixth edge-location at the first Equinix datacenter in Amsterdam. IPv6 trafic peaked over 1 Gbps for the first time, AMS-IX is by far the largest IPv6 exchange point.

2009

In 2009 AMS-IX undertook a number of major projects implementing MPLS/VPLS on the platform, upgrading a number of systems including my.ams-ix.net, the administrative environment amongst others with new contracts. Meanwhile adding more new members than ever and another new edge location at Interxion AMS5 in Schiphol Rijk. All in all an important year!

This presentation gives a more detailed overview of the growth of AMS-IX addressing both the organizational evolution as well as the various phases the platform went through.