The Catalan Neutral Internet Exchange celebrates its first birthdayBarcelona 30 June 2000 On June 4th 1999, the Catalan Neutral Internet Exchange (CATNIX) began to work. One year after, 10 telecommunication operators and Internet providers exchange the requests of their users in this node. From January to May, near 3 Terabytes (TB) of traffic have been exchanged at CATNIX, as if somebody had read the complete Cervantes' Don Quixote over 940.000 times.
An e-mail sent between users of different Internet Providers (IP) might travel to UK, USA and return to Catalonia (Spain) although these users live in the same street. The same thing happens when we read the electronic press, our request perhaps will jump through different nets even though the web pages are hosted in a server located in Catalonia. There could be up to 15 jumps or more between two different IPs, and every jump increases the risk that the request does not arrive to its destination. With an Internet Exchange Point (IXP) the Internet traffic between different local providers can be routed locally and does not have to travel hundreds or thousands of kilometres across different networks, thus reducing the traffic that goes to the nodes. The end users receive a better service because the path that the requested information has to travel along (across the web, by ftp, etc) is reduced. Furthermore, CATNIX helps to unburden the traffic on international nets. In adittion to the Supercomputing Center of Catalonia (CESCA), which hosts CATNIX, the following operators and providers exchange traffic in the Catalan IXP: al-pi Telecommunications, BT Telecommunications, Datagrama, Infase Communications, Catalan Institute of Technology, Internet Network Services, Menta, Retevisión and Sarenet. From January to May, the traffic exchanged in the IXP has been 2,768 GB, which is an amount three times larger than the traffic of 1999 (CATNIX started working on June 4th). References:
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