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Internet exchange AMS-IX celebrates 30-year anniversary

AMS-IX NEWS

AMS-IX

AMS-IX

31 January 2024

AMS-IX celebrates its 30th anniversary today, marking three decades of pioneering contributions to global connectivity, technological advancement, and digital innovation. Companies such as Adyen, Amazon, Apple, Booking.com, Google, Microsoft, Netflix and Odido and TikTok are active on our interconnection platform.

The importance of AMS-IX for the exchange of internet traffic

Since our establishment in 1994, we have been at the forefront of enabling the efficient exchange of internet traffic and have played an important role in shaping the digital landscape, both locally and globally.

As a neutral, non-profit organization, we enable connections between networks such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs), content providers, and streaming services. Due to the ever-increasing need for connectivity, we now have a peak traffic of nearly 12 Terabits per second, which is the equivalent of 100 million people playing Fortnite simultaneously or 6.4 million people watching TikTok videos.

Digital Mainport

Due to our international customer base (80% of our customers come from abroad), we have been instrumental in getting many international companies to establish themselves in Amsterdam. As a result, AMS-IX is now considered part of the third mainport, next to the port of Rotterdam and Schiphol Airport. The quality of the internet connectivity works like a magnet for international investment and is crucial for the Netherlands to maintain its leading position as a digital hub for Europe for now and in the future.

Over the years, we have achieved numerous milestones:

  • Global expansion: to enhance local connectivity, we have expanded our presence across several continents, starting nodes in prominent global cities in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the US; we now have 14 internet exchanges worldwide.
  • Technological innovation: we have been a pioneer in embracing the latest technologies, implementing state-of-the-art solutions such as 100 Gigabit Ethernet, Software-Defined Networking (SDN), and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), ensuring a future-proof and resilient internet infrastructure. In the meantime, we have also added 400 Gigabit ports to our network, prompted by the increasing demand for internet capacity.
  • Sustainable initiatives: through the implementation of new network equipment in the Equinix AM5 data centre, we have been able to reduce energy consumption at this site by 85%. The equipment has already been replaced in several data centres and will be done at all locations in the Netherlands in the near future, to reduce energy consumption and upgrade the platform.
  • Community involvement: we actively engage with industry partners, fostering collaboration, knowledge sharing, and educational initiatives to excite the next generation of internet professionals and foster a thriving digital community.

Peter van Burgel, CEO of AMS-IX, says:

"Celebrating our company's 30th anniversary is a testament to the unwavering commitment of our team, partners and stakeholders who have contributed to the success of AMS-IX, I am very proud of our work to promote internet connectivity throughout the world. Our mission to create a better society through a better internet fuels our commitment to energy-efficient solutions to make the internet safer, give users more control over their data, and use new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence responsibly. "

Areal photo of the Science Park Campus in Watergraafsmeer

Amsterdam (c) 4 juni 2023 Aerophoto-Schiphol

The start of AMS-IX

In the early 1990s, the internet was still in its infancy in the Netherlands. Academic institutes at the Science Park in Amsterdam wanted to exchange data directly with each other and make use of each other's (international) connections. In 1994, this led to the establishment of a local internet exchange at that location: AMS-IX was born. Various parties such as NIKHEF, SARA, CWI, SURFnet and NLnet were involved. Due to the many start-ups that were established at the Science Park, AMS-IX grew rapidly and six years later the association had 100 members. This is one of the most important values of an internet exchange: the more connected parties (and traffic), the more valuable it is to the internet ecosystem. AMS-IX now has over a 1000 connected parties from around the world. In the Netherlands, the company has a physical presence in 16 different data centres in and around Amsterdam and South Holland, and exchanges almost 12 Terabits per second over the platform during daily peak times.

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More information can be found here:

>> 30 years timeline

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