Farewell to GINX (Grahamstown Internet Exchange)

[Paul Hjul]

While the major improvements to internet connectivity in SA and SANREN are a good thing it is still somewhat nostaligic to see Ginx status say she is no more.

So SA is down one INX but since GINX started look at the growth of peering in SA and it is wow.

 

[MickeyD]

One of the original INX's in SA set up by Rhodes?

 

[Paul Hjul]

Well she wasn't that old - only 2004 . But IIRC when GINX came up CINX wasn't running (although I think it existed for a while but simply was out of play) although JINX was the type model of a commercially running INX.

I don't think much traffic ever went through her and she was mostly a demonstration and convenience for certain exercises (IIRC a particular motivation lay in doing updates and patches at one of the Albany Schools). With SANREN putting in a POP it falls away.
So no one of the original INXs wasn't set up by Rhodes although a heck of a lot of the Internet in SA was.

A major limit of course was the connectivity from the beloved primary fixed line operator in the country. Of course the question remains how much traffic is "really really local" in South Africa and assuming the ISPs do learn to play in the last mile (and LLU comes into play) would a distributed South African internet exchange (and yes my dislike for a naming monstrosity is coming in) seeing early handover between DSLAMs and MSANs and whatever WiMax does and your LTE infastructure be a good thing?

I neglected to put the link to the webpage for GINX: http://ginx.org.za/