IXP companies hiking investments amid data centre boom
Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) and peering networks are set to surge in India amid the data centre boom to support increasing IT workloads and strong data consumption by mobile users.
IXPs, typically, are physical locations where different networks connect to exchange internet traffic via common switching infrastructure. They are responsible for interconnecting internet service providers (ISPs), content delivery networks (CDNs) such as Cloudfare, Akamai, over-the-top (OTT) players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, DNS root servers, national and international telco networks and even social media networks like Instagram.
As per the Internet Society, India ranks number 2 in Asia on the IXP count metric. But it lags in penetration terms compared to Finland, Singapore, Australia and the UK. For instance, Finland and Singapore have 12.5 and 22 IXPs per 10 million people, respectively, whereas India has only 0.23 IXPs per 10 million people, according to Extreme Infocom.
Companies such as Extreme Infocom and DE-CIX India, though, have earmarked investments in the local IXP space. Experts see the sector initially fetching ₹10-15 crore in the next 2-3 years, but expect investments to jump 10-fold if regulatory hurdles are removed.
In the last two years, the number of peering members have nearly doubled from 550 in 2020 to 885 now, and the combined data carrying capacity of IXPs has grown from 10 Tbps to 25 Tbps, Internet Society data showed.
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