When larger bandwidths become available, very quickly new applications emerge that exploit it. But existing applications that are underperforming because of a lack of bandwidth also drive the growth of bandwidth.
So how does one keep up?
Some ten years ago, we had to swap out our devices every 6 months – we needed the next, slightly larger, model in order to grow just a bit. The constant racing against the clock is what led to the conception and design of the DE-CIX Apollon platform.
The platform helped us to take the Internet Exchange technology to a new level, with a device class that – based on the number of ports, traffic, and data throughput – was in another dimension entirely to what had previously been in operation. The new design was capable both of transporting the enormous data volumes, and of scaling into the next decade.
Global interconnection infrastructure
When DE-CIX Apollon was conceived and built, it was designed for our Internet Exchange in Frankfurt, primarily to sustain further growth. But thought had been put into how scalable and expandable the platform could be, and whether further locations could be integrated. In 2014 we began our international expansion with New York followed by the Mediterranean locations the following year. These locations were initially built as islands and then later connected to one another, meaning that DE-CIX Apollon is the basis for this large-scale, global interconnected infrastructure.
Today, this infrastructure encompasses a total of 27 Internet Exchanges, most of which are directly interconnected, accessible from more than 500 data centers in 80 countries – an interconnection ecosystem spanning seas, oceans, and continents.
Read the full story of the DE-CIX Apollon platform and the ever-increasing need of connectivity on our anniversary website.