NAPAfrica reaches a new peak - 15Gbps

Johannesburg, South Africa

NAPAfrica's Internet exchange traffic has reached a record-breaking peak of 15Gbps, making it the largest Internet Exchange Point (IXP) in Africa. NAPAfrica is housed within Teraco’s carrier and vendor neutral data centre facilities in sub-Saharan Africa.

The growth of this African IXP has been nothing short of phenomenal: it was launched in March 2012 and by December 2013 traffic was peaking at 5Gbps. In a little over two years, NAPAfrica has outperformed other leading IXPs by achieving double-digit growth. This rapid adoption by the market proves that peering exchanges are a much needed facility in the African Internet ecosystem.

Peering in Africa not only makes the Internet more affordable, but IXPs play a key role in advancing the development of the Internet ecosystem. IXPs such as NAPAfrica help to deliver a lower cost and superior usage experience for the consumer, which in turn drives demand for the industry as a whole.

Peering is not new - the practice of ISPs, network and content providers exchanging traffic directly, has been in existence for many years. This type of interconnection and exchange encourages the local routing of domestic or regional traffic and in doing so, reduces costs and improves performance. 

In reaching the 15Gbps mark, NAPAfrica has just proven yet again that the IXP (or peering) model works and makes a positive contribution to the Internet economy of Africa.

The role of the IXP in Africa will continue to grow in importance as the Internet increasingly globalises and interconnection between networks, content providers and users becomes even more critical. Consumer demand for services with increased bandwidth requirements will continue to surge (e.g. VOD etc.) with lower tolerance levels for latency.

The the growth of IXPs such as NAPAfrica mirrors that of more developed markets.

The growth of NAPAfrica is due to its impressive community, NAPAfrica has 140 members across its three Internet Exchange Points including many of the large global content providers.

Internationally IXPs are known for the value they bring in terms of the development of the Internet ecosystem. The understanding and acceptance of this concept has been slow to develop in Africa. Until recently Africa has been lagging, mostly due of a lack of understanding of the role of the IXP and what benefits it can provide. As a case in point: NAPAfrica is significant proof that Africa is not playing catch-up, it has already arrived.