Durban has become the first South African city to get a multi-site Internet exchange point. The project came from a public-private partnership between INX-ZA and the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, with support from Internet Solutions.
"Internet exchange points enable Internet service providers (ISPs) to interconnect their networks, so that users benefit from faster connections and more efficient access to online services," according to the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA).
Internet exchanges in South Africa have historically been limited to a single location requiring ISPs using the exchange to have infrastructure connecting to that location. Through this new project, INX-ZA has been able to extend the Durban Internet Exchange (DINX) to a second location, in Umhlanga, which it says is a first for South Africa.
"The extension of DINX makes it easy for Internet companies who already have infrastructure in Umhlanga to connect to peers at the existing DINX location. Peers at the new site will have the same peering experience and will be able to be directly linked, at no additional complexity, to all existing and future DINX peers," says Nishal Goburdhan, INX-ZA's manager.
"Network operators now get more flexibility in the choice of location that they may want to host their infrastructure at. Companies connecting to DINX also get immediate access to resilient core Internet infrastructure services, like the domain name services hosted at the current DINX location, which means users on their networks are less likely to experience down-time if the global domain name system comes under attack."
The ISPA says having multiple site Internet exchanges lowers the operating costs for local ISPs based in Durban and increases the quality of the experience for Durban users, especially when accessing Web sites hosted locally in Durban.
"By contributing resources from its eThekwini Fibre Metro project, the City of Durban has been able to work towards its socio-economic goals to promote the local economy."
INX-ZA began as an ISPA project, but is now independently managed by the users of the Internet exchanges. INX-ZA currently operates the only community-run, public Internet exchanges in Johannesburg (JINX), Cape Town (CINX) and Durban (DINX).
INX-ZA says the Johannesburg exchange point is the oldest Internet exchange on the continent, and has provided uninterrupted services to users since December 1996. Plans are under way to extend multisite capabilities to JINX and CINX.
The extension to DINX was supported by the eThekwini Metro and Dimension Data-owned Internet Solutions.
"We've been busy, working silently to build systems that help to improve things at network infrastructure level. We expect that in the next few months, many of these initiatives will start to mature, and network operators, present at the various INXes across the country, will start to reap the benefits," Goburdhan concludes.
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