The Internet Service Provider’s Association (ISPA) of South Africa has announced that the new Durban Internet Exchange (DINX) is live, complementing the Johannesburg Internet Exchange (JINX) and the Cape Town Internet Exchange (CINX), which are currently the two largest Internet exchange points in Africa.
Managed by ISPA, the three Internet Exchanges enable South African Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to interconnect their networks and provide an exchange point for local Internet traffic. This saves on operation costs, which are hopefully passed on to the consumer, and creates a more reliable network through redundancy.
As South Africa’s major ISPs begin to peer with one another in DINX, this means that gamers in the KwaZulu-Natal region that play online together will no longer be sending data to, and receiving data from CINX or JINX. This journey would typically add to the overall local latency experienced by gamers in the KZN region.
Coupled with the fact that Durban regularly tops the Ookla Quality Index for the best quality Internet connections in South Africa, things are looking up for gamers in KZN.
Graham Beneke, chair of ISPA’s INX Working Group, said that “While Durban has traditionally been a smaller Internet market than Johannesburg or Cape Town, it is also fast becoming a key telecommunications distribution hub with three major under-sea cables now landing a short distance up the North Coast at Mtunzini. This increased telecommunication capacity has catapulted Internet traffic in the region. ISPA builds INXs where there is current demand and scope for future growth. We have high hopes for the Durban exchange point.”
CINX and JINX both already process significant volumes of Internet traffic, with more than 50 IP networks peering at JINX, and 25 peering at CINX. It is anticipated that DINX will offer the same significant performance and cost savings for Durban-based businesses that the existing exchange points bring to their respective participants.
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