Our journey

The first Network Access Point (NAP) in Italy was created within a Lombard inter-university consortium, followed by a second one in Rome. Both NAPs were hosted in academic environments, considered neutral to avoid conflicts between operators, a distinctive feature of Internet Exchange Points (IXP) worldwide.

In the early 1990s, a concentration of ISPs developed on the Caldera campus, in the northwest of Milan, which led to the creation of a new NAP in 1996. This “mix,” initially not identified as a corporate entity, was created as an interconnection service, driven by voluntary and non-profit initiatives.

The easy connectivity offered by the Caldera campus fostered the development of the first Milanese NAP, which grew to the point where it required more structured management.

To meet this need, MIX S.r.l. was founded on January 27, 2000, with the aim of regulating the interconnection service and creating a dedicated physical structure. 28 operators participated in its founding, playing a key role in the birth and development of the “mix,” with the goal of ensuring neutrality and functionality.

MIX became a reference point for Italian Internet, offering reliable, high-performance connectivity for national and international ISPs.

MIX is one of the seven founding members of EURO-IX, the European Association of Internet Exchange Points, created to promote coordination and knowledge sharing between European IXPs for the benefit of the entire Internet community.

Starting in 2006, MIX strengthened its leadership position and expanded its presence into some of Italy’s main commercial data centers. It began within the Caldera campus, where it activated passive PoPs, and later moved its switches into key data centers in Lombardy, enhancing its platform and increasing accessibility for operators.

On November 23, 2015, MIX was one of the founding members of Open Hub Med, a new hub in Carini (PA), a strategic point for Internet traffic between Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The Sicilian hub aims to become the natural collector for the 135,000 km of submarine cables that currently land in Sicily and recreate the Milan Caldera ecosystem with the presence of MIX, thus reviving Italy’s role in international telecommunications.

In the same year, MIX became one of five IXPs worldwide to receive OIX-1 certification from Open-IX, confirming its excellence in terms of security and service reliability.

MIX became the first Italian IXP to pass the rigorous checks required for ISO27001:2013 certification, ensuring high-security standards for its infrastructure and processes.

On April 24, 2018, the shareholders’ meeting approved a capital increase from €99,000 to €1,000,000, marking the company’s steady growth over the years, a result of significant investments aimed at developing the Internet in Italy.
MIX, always mindful of security threats to Internet operations, joined MANRS – Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security, an initiative supported by ISOC to promote the adoption of technical measures to make the global routing infrastructure more solid and secure.

MIX celebrated its first 20 years of operation with over 300 connected networks (ISPs, carriers, content providers, hosters), with activated capacity exceeding 6 Tbps.

The Covid-19 pandemic, which forced Italians to perform most daily activities online, led to a surge in data traffic, surpassing the 1.1 Tbps peak.

In March, the MIX PoP in Open Hub Med became MIX Palermo, the first Edge IX of MIX, with its own technical autonomy.

On April 29, Alessandro Talotta was appointed the new president of MIX, succeeding Joy Marino, who had led MIX since its foundation in 2000.

The need for low latency and proximity to end users solidified the role of Edge IXPs: MIX-Bologna was established within BOIX, Lepida’s data center, a hub for ICT services in the Emilia-Romagna region.
The streaming of the Milan-Salzburg and Juventus-Paris St. Germain UEFA Champions League matches pushed the traffic exchanged at MIX beyond the 2 Tbps threshold.
By the end of the year, activated capacity exceeded 12 Tbps, with a 30% YoY growth.

On November 29, the Cloud Europe data center hosted MIX-Roma, the first node of MIX’s local peering platform dedicated to the Central Italy ecosystem. Over 200 new networks joined in the capital.

The 17th edition of the Salotto, MIX’s annual event, was held for the first time over two days at the Allianz MiCo conference center. With over 1,000 attendees and more than 400 companies from the telecom sector, Salotto became the key event for Italy’s IP community.

With the opening of a new PoP at the IX Edge MIX-Roma in Aruba’s Hyper Cloud Data Center (IT4), MIX doubled its presence in the capital.In October, MIX-Caserta was launched at the new DataFelix DF01 Data Center, providing medium and small operators in Southern Italy, who had not yet connected to MIX, the opportunity to connect and exchange traffic with 380 networks, in addition to those already interconnected at the local exchange point.

MIX celebrates its 25th anniversary by consolidating its role as Italy’s leading interconnection platform. With 5 active IX edges, daily traffic peaks at over 3 Tbps, supported by a total capacity of 17 Tbps and over 420 connected networks.

The company now has 19 members, including the major national TLC operators.

To mark this important milestone, MIX announces the creation of a new, state-of-the-art data room at the historic Caldera data center. With DC3, the total area dedicated to the data center reaches 1,400 m², with a maximum available power of 2 MW.