AMS-IX breaks through 11 Tbit/s barrier

On October 16, around 8pm central European time, another milestone was reached by AMS-IX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange). The Internet Exchange provider, for the first time in its 25-year history, notched up a new record for peak internet traffic and broke through the 11Tbit/s barrier (11.152 Tbit/s to be exact).

It was a case of when not if.

In 2016 peak internet traffic passed 5 Tbit/s, and by 2020 the 9Tbit/s barrier was broken.

Then, in January this year, AMS-IX nudged oh­-so­-close to 11 Tbit/s when its network operations center handled a peak traffic volume of 10.95 Tbit/s. The onset of warmer weather and the lifting of pandemic-induced lockdowns meant traffic levels remained more or less the same since then, but they are now creeping up again. Winter months generally see more activity from Internet users than the summer.

Figure 1: Amsterdam Internet Exchange plans to offer 400GE ports from Juniper Networks next year.
(Source: Sundry Photography/Alamy Stock Photo)

"We've seen annual traffic growth of 20% for some time now, which is incredible," Bram Semeijn, external communications specialist at AMS-IX, told Light Reading. "During lockdown, traffic volumes increased by 40% but it's now settled back to pre-COVID growth levels."

Juniper migration to 400GE

AMS-IX is one of the biggest Internet exchanges in the world, connecting more than 875 IP networks via multiple independent colocation facilities in Amsterdam.

Aside from seasonal factors affecting growth, AMS-IX reports that many networks have upgraded their Layer 2 access port capacity into the exchange during the last few months.

AMS-IX currently allows networks to connect with either Gigabit Ethernet (GE), 10GE or 100GE ports – or multiples of these – using routers supplied by Extreme Networks.

Moving forward, said Semeijn, AMS-IX will adopt routers from Juniper Networks that offer 400GE ports (as well as 100GE and 10GE options).

"We haven't started with the migration to Juniper yet," added Semeijn, "but we've trained our staff and are currently in the process of preparing our monitoring and automation for the planned migration in early 2023."

Semeijn noted that AMS-IX was already seeing lots of interest in 400GE ports from its larger clients, and had received several applications to participate in a pilot.

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This does not mean the end of the road for Extreme's access routers at AMS-IX – at least not immediately.

"Migration to Juniper will take a long time as the [AMS-IX] platform consists of numerous switches, and we're going to combine the upgrade with other maintenance activities as well," said Semeijn. "We'll certainly be working with Extreme in 2023 and probably in the coming years."

The Internet Exchange in Amsterdam currently has a total customer connected capacity of 51.2 Tbit/s.

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— Ken Wieland, contributing editor, special to Light Reading