Internet Exchange Points

Description

Sam Paltridge:

" IXPs are places where different Internet networks can physically interconnect to send and receive traffic between their networks. Following the commercialization of the Internet they rapidly spread around the world to enable service providers to economically and efficiently exchange traffic locally.

In the absence of an IXP, in any country, local traffic between two service providers will by and large be exchanged internationally. In these cases an email sent from one user to another, in the same country but using different service providers, may be routed via an IXP in New York or Paris rather exchanged domestically. By way of contrast, if that traffic is exchanged locally it can be far less expensive (i.e. avoiding expensive international circuits) and provide better performance for users (e.g. in some countries avoiding satellite circuits with their inherent delays).

Some 90 countries don’t have IXP’s today. There is a map created by the Packet Clearing House which keeps count of countries with and without an IXP: https://prefix.pch.net/applications/ixpdir/summary/ IXPs are relatively inexpensive (e.g. less than USD 40 000 per IXP) to establish and can benefit all stakeholders. For less than USD 4 million each country of the world without an IXP could have one." (http://lunaticthought.blogspot.com/2008/03/oecd-published-great-interview-with-its.html)