JINX exceeds 1 Gbps traffic. Helped by Google?
The Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) currently operates two Internet exchange points – the Johannesburg Internet Exchange (JINX) and the Cape Town Internet Exchange (CINX).
While new public peering points are under development in South Africa – notably the Teraco based NAPAfrica layer 2 Internet eXchange point – JINX and CINX remain the main public peering points in the country.
Good news is that both JINX and CINX have seen significant traffic growth over the last few months. JINX recently exceeded the 1 Gbps traffic mark while CINX peaked at close to 250 Mbps a few weeks ago.
ISPA did not provide comment regarding the growth of traffic by the time of publication, but a logical supposition is that the growth in traffic from peering is due to general Internet growth as well as the increasing awareness of the benefits of peering. Another possible reason for the growth is Google’s local network presence.
Google boosting local peering traffic?
Google recently confirmed that it has a network presence in South Africa, as it does in many other countries around the world, to try and ensure the best possible performance of Google services for users in local regions.
Google’s Mike Axelrod points out that it is inefficient to send the same copy of media multiple times over international links, and it therefore makes sense to push content to the edge of the network to improve performance.
Google Global Cache (GGC) is the solution, and it allows a large portion of these requests to be served from a small node located inside the service provider’s network serving regional users.
It is an open secret that, for some time already, Google has set up Google Global Cache (GGC) servers in South Africa. According to one source Google currently has three sets of GGC servers in South Africa, which includes servers on the Internet Solutions and SAIX/Telkom networks.
It is easy to see the value in open peering when bandwidth intensive content like YouTube videos are hosted locally. ISPs, which can get access to the GGC content through open peering, will not only save money and bandwidth but the performance will be far better than if it were fetching this content internationally.
Google seems to have sworn all the operators and service providers to secrecy regarding their local GGC servers, but according to a well placed source GGC traffic is already flowing through the JINX and CINX peering points.
Google to peer at CINX & JINX?
It is rumoured that Google is looking to peer directly at JINX and CINX in future. Google is already present at most of the Internet Exchanges in Europe, Asia and the United States, making it a logical choice to duplicate that strategy in South Africa.
For now ISPs which would like to get access to GGC content will have to try to negotiate an open peering agreement with one of the GGC networks – something which may be easier said than done.
JINX, peering and Google << comments and views
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