Goodbye 2022 – what a year at DE-CIX

2022, what a year. So much happened at DE-CIX and we are excited about the new challenges in 2023. But first let us share just a few of our 2022 highlights with you:

DE-CIX Phoenix went live

In March, the fifth Internet Exchange in North America went live, expanding our reach to new markets in the US. DE-CIX Phoenix brings data and interconnection services closer to the users on the west coast of the US. Phoenix, AZ is the urban technology center of the western US, a core hub for data centers with robust connectivity of over 60 long-haul and metro fiber, telecom, broadband, and wireless network providers.

Welcome to the 1 Tbps club DE-CIX Madrid

In September, DE-CIX Madrid recorded a new traffic peak: 1 terabit per second (Tbps). This milestone coincided with the first day of the Champions League, and the matches Real Madrid vs. Celtic and Sevilla vs. Manchester City. There have been several record peaks in Southern Europe in the past three years – the data throughput at DE-CIX Madrid has increased almost by 140 percent since beginning of 2020.

14 terabits for DE-CIX Frankfurt

DE-CIX Frankfurt set a new record for data throughput and the barrier of 14 Tbps was crossed for the first time. The data traffic at peak times has risen by 33 percent in Frankfurt this year as we broke the 11, 12, and 13 Tbps barriers also in 2022. 

10 years UAE-IX

This year we celebrated the 10^th birthday of UAE-IX powered by DE-CIX. Starting from an empty data center in 2012, the Internet Exchange today is a global Internet hub. UAE-IX has experienced huge growth in data traffic – more than 180 percent since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. 

Platform upgrades

We conducted several platform upgrades this year – starting with the GlobePEER route service upgrade, to facilitate the exchange of BGP announcements between peers at DE-CIX. We also upgraded the edge routers at DE-CIX Frankfurt to new Nokia 7750 SR-14 models, which allowed us to introduce 800 GE access technology – the first Internet Exchange operator to do so.

We ended the year with huge success with the completion of EVPN rollout at our locations where we run the DE-CIX Apollon platform (all locations except India). DE-CIX is the first Internet Exchange operator using EVPN and its associated Proxy ARP/NDP function. 

11 new locations

The DE-CIX world is expanding and this year we announced a total of 11 new locations. Together with our partners we introduced Bucharest, Leipzig, Manila, Prague, Sofia, and Warsaw. And through the DE-CIX as a Service partner model, we welcomed AqabaIX, Iraq-IXP, and three locations in a new continent for us – Africa – with Kinshasa, Lagos, and Tripoli.