NAPAfrica reaches 1Tbps peak traffic
Africa’s largest Internet Exchange Point (IXP), NAPAfrica has reached a peak traffic milestone of 1 Terabit per second (Tbps).
Manager of Interconnection and Peering at Teraco, Andrew Owens, said this is a noteworthy milestone for the continent.
“The NAPAfrica members, including global content and cloud providers, over 250 telecommunication providers, managed service providers and a growing enterprise base, are the driving force behind achieving this momentous goal,” Owens said.
When NAPAfrica was first launched in 2012, it recorded traffic of 532Mbps. The 1Tbps peak represents a growth of approximately 1,884-times.
“The exchange started with five members and today has in excess of 440 unique ASNs connected from across the world, including 26 African countries,” Teraco said.
“In a relatively short space of time NAPAfrica has become a significant contributor to the Internet ecosystem within Africa. This was one of our ultimate goals, to be of value to our members and to sustainably develop the African Internet ecosystem,” said Owens.
The exchange is the seventh-biggest in the world.
Growth of Internet in Africa
Teraco said NAPAfrica’s recent growth was driven by uptake in networks and enterprises accessing key content and cloud services, as well as general use of the Internet across Africa, with users visiting popular sites such as Netflix, Facebook, and YouTube.
Owens explained that interest shown by neighbouring countries has been significant.
“Telcos in countries as far afield as Angola, Togo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have joined the exchange. NAPAfrica has become the Internet hub for Sub-Saharan Africa,” Owens said.
“More recently, the exchange has also seen a growing trend of enterprises and banks joining NAPAfrica to leverage its efficient and cost-effective access to content and cloud operators.”
The graphs below show the peak traffic of 1Tbps on the NAPAfrica IXP on 3 March 2020.
1 Tbps peak traffic
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