The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), once reserved exclusively for internet service providers, is now peering with Google, according to PeeringDB. Google has a 10 gigabit port at the exchange, set up by the government in 2003, while CtrlS and Web Werks, which run data centres, are also now peering with the exchange. Internet exchanges are meeting places for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), telcos and content providers, where data traffic is freely exchanged at a fixed port charge.
While NIXI has the widest presence in India in terms of geographic spread, privately owned exchanges like DE-CIX India and Extreme Internet Exchange currently have much higher traffic. NIXI’s share of traffic may soon increase, though. The exchange has joined GPX Mumbai, a data centre/colocation hub which is host to other internet exchanges as well as content providers that account for large portions of the Indian internet. GPX Mumbai announced NIXI’s joining in a press release.
“GPXs’ customers now have the opportunity to connect to NIXI, the oldest and one of the most significant Internet Exchanges in the country for low-latency and cost-effective interconnection solutions to expand their reach,” GPX said in a press release. More inter-connectivity is always good, and NIXI has heavyweight telcos and ISPs for members, which means the latter’s customers may start having better experiences streaming online content distributed through NIXI’s networks, even as the networks themselves are able to handle that traffic at a lower cost.
NIXI is also seeking to bolster its bandwidth in Chennai and New Delhi, putting out two tenders for servers and core switches in those cities. Mumbai continues to account for the Indian internet’s busiest traffic area, though, as GPX’s announcement shows. The company had four of India’s other mainstream internet exchanges participating in its data centre, and now it has NIXI too. “We are sure there will be much of demand and traction to get connected with NIXI at GPX and that will boost NIXI’s traffic multi-fold,” GPX said in a statement.
At the time of publication, , NIXI’s national traffic peaks at less than 200Gbps. The traffic growth in the coming year will make clear the impact of these moves.
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