INX-ZA and\u00a0Liquid Telecom South Africa have added\u00a0a fourth data centre node to\u00a0the Johannesburg Internet Exchange (JINX) and have extended\u00a0the Cape Town Internet Exchange (CINX) to become the company’s third multi-site exchange point in Africa.<\/p>\n
JINX began as a project of the Internet Service Providers\u2019 Association (ISPA) and is now independently managed by INX-ZA, which currently operates the only community-run, public Internet exchanges in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlongside Johannesburg and Durban, the recent expansion of CINX puts Cape Town on the map as the third city in South Africa with a multi-site internet exchange, all of which are operated by INX-ZA,” said Nishal Goburdhan, INX-ZA Manager.<\/p>\n
“It had earlier further expanded JINX to four data centres – including Teraco Isando, Liquid Telecom Midrand, Hetzner Samrand and the original site IS Parklands – enabling connected members in any site to peer quickly and cost effectively with members in the other data centres.<\/p>\n
“This speaks to the global internet community who are seeing South Africa as the primary centre for cloud and interconnection\u201d<\/p>\n
Liquid Telecom\u2019s data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town are currently undergoing major upgrades and are home to fibre routes of many major carriers, MNOs, cloud service providers and financial institutions.<\/p>\n
The data centres were acquired by Liquid Telecom earlier in 2017 and are undergoing major expansions to meet the needs of global cloud players.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the\u00a0Africa Peering and Internet Forum (AfPIF)\u00a0Ben Roberts, Group CTIO of Liquid Telecom said that the internet exchange points enable ISPs to interconnect their networks so that domestic Internet users benefit from faster connections and more efficient access to online services.<\/p>\n
Network operators would also benefit from lower costs, resulting in more affordable bandwidth which is crucial for the development of the Internet.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohannesburg is not only a major interconnection point for South Africa, but, alongside Nairobi in Kenya, has emerged as a regional centre of interconnection for Africa, and a natural home for hosting cloud data storage,\u201d said Roberts.<\/p>\n