Amsterdam is becoming an increasingly important international Internet hub

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The geographical location of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) is essential for European success

December 02, 2004

Amsterdam is truly an international hub when speaking in terms of peering, or the exchanging of Internet traffic. The AMS-IX platform is one of Europe’s largest independent Exchange Points for Internet traffic and a recent survey points out that the geographical location is an essential factor in the success of an Internet hub.

Recent survey results* of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) show that foreign telco- parties, under which carriers, ISP’s, content providers, VoIP-providers and mobile operators, partly due to the location, choose for this Internet platform in Amsterdam. One third of the questioned parties refer to the geographical location of the Internet hub as one of the main reasons to connect to AMS-IX . Furthermore, the amount of connected parties and the costs benefits to be realised form important for the international telco- and data communication market incentives to use the platform..

Besides this, the survey results show that the AMS-IX platform is one of the few Internet Exchanges where such huge amounts of Internet traffic are being exchanged by a large number of international connected parties. Over 60 % of the connected parties are based outside of the Netherlands.

“We see an increasing amount of East European and Asian based members starting to connect to AMS-IX. Both regions have very limited international peering opportunities, that is why these parties find their way to Amsterdam. With one single AMS-IX connection, these parties are able to get all their international peering connectivity”, according to Job Witteman, general manager of AMS-IX. “This is clearly reflected by the strong growth of Internet traffic over AMS-IX, which has now passed 10 Petabyte for the first time during November 2004.”

“Our Internet traffic with European ISP’s and carriers has recently increased tremendously”, says Mr. Song, network planning manager of KT (Korea Telecoms). “That is why we are delighted with the connection to AMS-IX, which enables us to directly exchange data with a large number of these parties to unburden our international connections.”

(353 words)

*The survey was executed in cooperation with TeleCity during June and July 2004 with 127 members of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange

NOTES TO EDITORS

About AMS-IX

AMS-IX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange) is a neutral and independent not-for-profit Internet exchange providing services since the early 1990's. AMS-IX is one of the largest Internet hubs worldwide, where over 200 Internet related parties come together to exchange Internet traffic amongst them. The AMS-IX platform provides high quality, non-blocking professional peering services for all types of IP traffic whether data or VoIP. AMS-IX hosts the first mobile peering points worldwide, the Global GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX) and the Mobile Data Exchange (MDX), as well as solutions for broadcasting traffic with the multicast peering service.

For further press information, please contact Marieke van Zuien at LEWIS, Global Public Relations

Tel: 0031 (0)40 235 46 00
E-mail: mariekev@lewispr.com
http://www.lewispr.com

For further information about AMS-IX please contact Cara Mascini:

Tel: 0031 (0)20 305 89 95
E-mail: cara.mascini@ams-ix.net
http://www.ams-ix.net