The Internet Service Providers’ Association of SA (ISPA) recently announced that its Cape Town Internet Exchange (CINX) is live, allowing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the Western Cape to interconnect with each other. A dozen service providers have already signed up to use the exchange.<\/p>\n
“The amount of Internet traffic in Cape Town has grown exponentially over the past few years, as online media, call centres and other heavy Internet business users have flourished,” said Rob Hunter, Chair of ISPA’s Anti-spam and JINX Working Groups. <\/p>\n
CINX compliments ISPA’s Johannesburg Internet Exchange (JINX) where many of the countries’ largest ISPs peer. “Johannesburg ISPs have long enjoyed benefits such as improved performance for traffic within the city, cost-savings and an extra layer of redundancy from the JINX,” said Hunter. “Cape Town service providers will now also be able to take advantage of a local peering point and experience the same benefits.”<\/p>\n
Local peering can go a long way to reduce the cost of local bandwidth in South Africa. To promote interconnection between local ISPs, ISPA recently announced a set of sweeping changes to its policies for its Internet Exchange Points.<\/p>\n
Among these changes are the removal of its previous equivalent line charge model which is replaced with a port charge and host benefit fee model that will help bring costs down to the benefit of ISPs and consumers alike.<\/p>\n
CINX and JINX Traffic<\/strong><\/p>\n CINX has kicked off with a bang and is currently exchanging close to 80 Mbps during peak times, around 10% of the traffic exchanged at its Johannesburg counterpart.<\/p>\n The more established JINX is currently carrying around 700 Mbps during peak times, nearly double the traffic from only twelve months ago. JINX has in fact shown exponential traffic growth over the last five years, something that bodes well for the local Internet and broadband market.<\/p>\n This peering growth is a result of various prominent service providers starting to increase the usage of JINX, including Internet Solutions, MTN NS, Neotel, TENET, iBurst, Vox Telecom and MWEB. <\/p>\n A few prominent broadband providers are however still absent at JINX and CINX, most noticeably Telkom and Vodacom. These two providers currently dominate the local broadband market, and it will have direct benefits to the local Internet space if Telkom and Vodacom join JINX & CINX and interconnect directly with smaller ISPs.<\/p>\n