AMS-IX - Archive

Increase in peering traffic between ISPs after European Peering Forum

21 december 2006

Amsterdam, 21 December 2006 - The first ever European Peering Forum, hosted by Europe's leading Internet exchange points, has been hailed a great success, not only by the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who attended, but in the subsequent increase in peering traffic flowing across these exchanges.

Peering, a cost neutral arrangement between two Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to exchange Internet traffic, is undertaken to reduce costs and provide more direct routing of this traffic. Now, just two weeks after the event, all three exchanges see increased growth in exchanged traffic. The forum, hosted by AMS-IX, DE-CIX and LINX on 29th and 30th November in Frankfurt, Germany, brought together 175 delegates representing well over 100 different industry organisations. The main event sponsor was Foundry Networks, the leading provider of switch equipment to both AMS-IX and LINX.

Statistics show that the percentage growth of average combined peak-traffic over the last four years has been approximately 10 % per month. As we approach the holiday period in December, it is usual for this average growth to drop to around 2%. However, for the period immediately following on from the European Peering Forum, AMS-IX, DE-CIX and LINX combined are reporting a doubling of this regular percentage - to around 4%.

'Each year, it's normal to see strong growth in peered traffic during the last quarter, usually starting in late September. This year has been no exception with a further noticeable increase from late November, hopefully driven along by the European Peering Forum' Mike Hughes, Chief Technical Officer of LINX confirms. LINX operates a dual vendor network with traffic balanced between two vendors on two distinct networks but with traffic totals flowing across Foundry switches at LINX and AMS-IX topping 300Gbps, Foundry Networks is at the center of this growth.

Henk Steenman, Chief Technical Officer of AMS-IX adds 'AMS-IX made history this year when traffic flowing across our infrastructure exceeded 200Gbps. The ease of migration between Foundry products to support this growth, combined with the service and support received by Foundry Networks has been a factor in our success'.

There is a real desire amongst those who attended to make this a regular event in the Internet industry calendar in future.

Sylvie LaPerriere, Director of Peering for VSNL International says 'I am very pleased to see the level of cooperation among the 3 largest exchanges in Europe. I have certainly been able to extend my peering base in Europe through this excellent, well-participated peering event'.

Teliasonera's Peter Cohen agrees 'The European Peering Forum was a valuable forum for me that brought together networks that previously had not attended other events. I'm looking forward to the next one'.

Notes for Editors:

1. 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 250 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 regular data, video or VoIP. AMS-IX additionally 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 with the multicast peering service. (www.ams-ix.net)

2. Deutscher Commercial International Exchange (DEC-IX) is the carrier neutral and independent Internet Exchange in Frankfurt/Germany. Founded in the mid 1990s DE-CIX is now one the Top 3 Internet Exchanges in Europe measured both in terms of traffic exchanged and ISPs served. Located right in the heart of Europe DE-CIX offers Public Peering, VLAN, Private Interconnect and colocation services. The robust and distributed switching platform makes DE-CIX the first choice of many ISPs in Europe and throughout the rest of the world. (www.decix.de)

3. London Internet Exchange (LINX) connects the networks of Content Delivery and Internet Service Providers so that traffic may flow more efficiently between them. LINX is one of the largest Exchange Points globally, measured both in terms of the traffic that passes over its network and the Internet routes which are directly accessible from its peering LAN. Today LINX has more than 220 members - both ISPs and content delivery service providers - from the UK, mainland Europe, the USA, Africa and the Far East handling up to 95 per cent of all UK Internet traffic. (www.linx.net)

4. Foundry Networks, Inc. is a leading provider of high-performance enterprise and service provider switching, routing, security, and application traffic management solutions. Foundry's 10,000 customers includes the world's premier ISPs, Metro service providers, and enterprises. (www.foundrynet.com)

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