NAPAfrica IXP firing up first free 100Gbps ports soon
Courtesy of Jan Vermeulen, MyBroadband
NAPAfrica will provide two of its clients with 100Gbps ports at its Internet exchange points inside Teraco’s data centres in November 2016.
NAPAfrica Internet ExchangeAndrew Owens, senior product manager for interconnection and peering at Teraco Data Environments, said another two clients are also expected to get 100Gbps ports by the end of January 2017.
The launch of NAPAfrica’s first 100Gbps port upgrades comes after the Internet exchange revealed it is pushing over 100Gbps of traffic. “International networks have highlighted Africa as an attractive destination, with certain countries, notably South Africa, seen as connection hubs for surrounding countries,” said Owens.
“Content players such as Netflix have a massive impact on exchanges, in that it ultimately leads to all members having to upgrade.” Owens said that most of their new installations start at 10Gbps and given the price drop on optics, they now consider it as “the new entry-level”.
NAPAfrica is a neutral, layer 2 Internet exchange point that runs out of Teraco’s Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town data centres. Teraco launched NAPAfrica in 2012. As with NAPAfrica’s existing 10Gbps and 40Gbps services, the 100Gbps ports will be provided for free. “NAPAfrica will continue to be free, with free ports, free cross-connects, and free membership, as we have directly seen the impact of making it easier and more cost-effective for networks to operate.”
