IXP
How an Internet Exchange Can Increase Cybersecurity
When people talk about Internet Exchanges, they usually focus on performance, like lower latency, faster traffic, and cheaper bandwidth. That’s all true. But there’s another side that often gets overlooked: an IX can also make the Internet safer.
BEAD winners can stretch dollars with IXPs
When BEAD winners build new last-mile or middle-mile networks, connecting back to the global Internet is essential. Without a nearby exchange, that traffic may have to travel hundreds of miles to a major metro before reaching popular destinations like cloud providers, streaming platforms, or even local government websites. This detour adds latency, reduces performance, and increases costs.
The Hidden Dangers of Geographically Overextending an IX Fabric
But in an age where everything is “distributed,” some IX operators are stretching their fabrics far beyond the cities they were born in. While this might seem like growth, it can introduce serious risks to network performance, resilience, and economics.
Enterprise Guide to Selecting a Colocation Data Center
This guide outlines the critical factors enterprises should consider when selecting a colocation partner.
Why ISPs Should Prioritize Interconnection Over Raw Speed
In the broadband industry, the race for higher speeds has dominated marketing campaigns and consumer expectations. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) continually tout gigabit speeds as the ultimate benchmark for quality. While speed is important, a more critical yet often overlooked aspect of internet performance is interconnection—the way ISPs connect and exchange traffic with other networks. … Read more
How Route Servers Work on an Internet Exchange Point (IXP)
In the world of Internet connectivity, Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) play a crucial role in facilitating efficient traffic exchange between networks. Within this ecosystem, route servers act as intermediaries to streamline the process of establishing connections, known as peering, between multiple networks. Here’s an overview of how route servers work and why they are vital … Read more
Remote Peering
Martin J. Levy from Cloudflare did a presentation about remote peering possibly being a bad thing. In this presentation, he brings up several valid points. https://www.globalpeeringforum.org/pastEvents/gpf14/presentations/Wed_2_MartinLevy_remote_peering_is_bad_for.pdf Some thoughts of my own. Yes, remote peering is happening. One thing touched upon is the layer3 vs layer2 traffic. We at MidWest-IX only allow remote peering at a … Read more