The leading Italian Internet Exchange confirms its commitment to ensuring the highest quality and availability of its services for the interconnection of Internet networks in Italy.
MIX, the main Italian Internet Exchange, announces that it has raised the reliability of the electrical continuity system of its data centres to the 2N level.
This result was obtained by preparing a second MV/LV transformer cabin. The project, launched in mid-2022, was divided into various phases. After an initial feasibility study, a preliminary plan was drawn up for the identification and creation of technical spaces and systems for supplying the new section. This was followed by an executive project, which required the integration of mechanical, electrical and IT aspects. With the testing completed in recent days, the new booth is now fully operational.
In the past, generator sets and UPS systems had already been integrated to a level 2N redundancy degree. With the activation of the second cabin, all components of the MIX data room energy supply system have a backup twin.
Alessandro Talotta, Executive Chairman and President of MIX, comments: “This investment demonstrates MIX’s commitment to being the reference partner of TLC operators for interconnection services in Italy, offering a connectivity platform compliant with the highest technical standards of reliability and safety, already ISO 27001 and OPEN-IX OIX-1 certified”.
Interconnection is more important than ever for modern enterprises. With remote working and increasing bandwidth demands, large enterprises can utilise interconnection services at IXPs to improve their products and accelerate their digital transformation efforts.
But what is interconnection? How did it start? Why is it so important? If you’re new to this important part of digital infrastructure or are considering leveraging interconnection for your business, read on!
What exactly is interconnection?
As public and hybrid cloud infrastructures became viable options for enterprises, users needed a way to connect their various instances together. Interconnection offers businesses an efficient and cost-effective way to use resources from multiple providers through low-latency, high availability connections.
How did interconnection start?
When businesses began using the internet in the 90s and 00s, usage was much more predictable than it is now. Organisations knew how many employees would need network access, where they would be working, where data generation would be taking place, and how much data would be travelling over the corporate LAN and WAN. These are all factors that remote working and rapid scaling have made impossible today.
Enterprise applications were usually custom-built and lived in the “server room” of the business HQ, where those in charge of server maintenance would work in the same building.
In those days, interconnection meant ensuring individual servers in these rooms were connected together, and that key teams had access to the applications on those machines.
Enterprises then turned to MPLS
Multiprotocol label switching became a popular networking option for enterprises looking for reliable performance. It was predictable, and delivered low latency with minimal packet loss which was ideal for growing workloads. However, MPLS could be very expensive, which led to slow deployments and constrained capacity.
Enterprises (or rather their chosen network providers) would have to physically run cables between site locations, a costly process which could sometimes take months to complete.
While the public internet was an option at this point, it was not viable for latency-sensitive workloads or those which required extra security.
Along came cloud computing
The 21st century cloud boom happened at the same time that network operators were investing heavily in their infrastructure. The cloud offered an uber-cheap, accessible alternative to on-premise infrastructure, and many expected enterprises to simply “lift and shift” their workloads to this new-founded technology.
Although many organisations did begin to leverage cloud technology, most opted for a hybrid model rather than full migration. Enterprises slowly shifted what applications they could into the cloud but still maintained their on premise data centres for apps they didn’t want to, or couldn’t, move. This further drove the requirement for interconnection.
Interconnection and the IXP.
Even though technological innovations are happening continuously, we are firmly living in the zettabyte age. Enterprises are producing and handling enormous amounts of data as cloud, mobile, social, video and big data become increasingly essential to business success.
Performance and profitability are huge priorities, and end-users are only becoming less forgiving and more thrifty. So it’s more important than ever for large enterprises to have the ability to gather and distribute huge volumes of IP traffic cheaply and effectively on a global scale. Interconnecting at IXPs is giving organisations that crucial connectivity at a manageable cost— whether they’re enabling remote workforces through the easy sharing of information or maintaining business-critical cloud access.
Peering at Italy’s leading Internet Exchange.
With IXPs across Italy (Milan metro area, Bologna and Palermo) totalling 10 points of presence (PoPs), MIX offers the perfect strategic gateway between central and southern Europe. The MIX interconnection platform offers customers an opportunity to exchange internet traffic with enhanced network performance, increased data flow control, reducing latency and IP-Transit costs. For more information, you can reach out to our IXP experts here.
I am ultimately responsible for the MIX technical team. My squad looks after a lot of things, including the MIX Network Infrastructure development and operations. This includes the Internet Exchange switching platform itself, the Data Centers that host the core of that infrastructure together with customers interconnection equipment colocated with us, and the IT and security services for all the internal and customer facing applications we have developed throughout the years.
What’s the best part of your job?
There’s really no chance to get bored when you have to cover all of the above! I enjoy working with my nine-person team to manage our large service portfolio which plays such a crucial role in the Internet ecosystem, especially with the huge growth figures we have experienced lately. I also proudly brew a great espresso for myself and any office guests too; it usually keeps them awake!
What exciting things are happening at MIX right now?
A hell of a lot!
On the network side, we’re migrating our L2 platform to a EVPN infrastructure to meet customer demand in terms of scalability, adopting at the same time 400G both for the core connections and high speed connecting members. We are also adding a new PoP to the Milan cluster and creating new Metro Areas (independent local IXs through the country) to sustain our ‘keep local traffic local’ mantra.
On the Data Center side, we’re working on the optimization and empowering of the existing twin DC infrastructure in the Caldera Campus, finally obtaining full redundancy on our own proprietary power distribution architecture while optimising PUE for both data rooms, implementing free cooling wherever possible and becoming greener than ever. We’re also working on expansion plans as we expect to fill all available space throughout 2023.
On the Customer Service side, we are working hard to improve the handling of Hands & Eyes, DC access, and cross connects requests/management through the second release of our Customer Portal. We want to provide each of our members with a complete dashboard of the services MIX provides. Ranging from IP traffic on the IX—our bread and butter—to power and rack space utilisation, and cross connects request and management. We believe that together with the MIX Finder, our “marketplace” section of the Customer Portal, our members will be able to find and manage most MIX services—massively improving the value of a MIX membership.
If you could change one thing about the digital infrastructure industry, what would it be?
I see a lot of dedication from many knowledgeable people both within large and small players providing network and ISP services, and being a seasoned witness of the local Internet scenario I am not concerned about the future of the industry at techie level.
As an industry, we’re never enough in numbers. Because of that, we created the ‘MIX cool school program’ with secondary schools to grow the numbers of enthusiastic young network engineers joining the community.
In general I am pretty much concerned about that fact that the competition on the retail market is done quite exclusively on the Internet Access prices, and being so fierce not giving back to the ISP community enough resources to build and develop a solid FTTH and Wireless Fixed Broadband access infrastructures, two key platforms that must be equally strong in a scenario like the Italian one. I have the feeling that we could have gained more from the live streaming of sport events and the increased use of enterprise smart working through the pandemic, but maybe it’s just too early to say that.
Why should more businesses leverage connections to Italian networks?
The live streaming of sporting events and smart working adoption in the enterprise world created a point-of-no-return in our habits, both as everyday workers and individuals spending our leisure time—this is driving a huge push for the country to become more digitised. The traffic figures speak for themselves!
I also feel the interest in Italy as a country (our food, culture, lifestyle, luxury goods development and craftsmanship) has never been as strong as it is today. This offers an unprecedented level of opportunity for foreign network players to connect their mature digital markets to the developing Italian one, to increase mutual benefit. There’s a lot of interest in digital services within the Italian enterprise world (cloud, digital security etc.) and an appetite for gaming and sports streaming by local end users. Increasing the quality of the connectivity between foreign enterprise buyers and Italian firms (luxury goods, fashion, automotive parts, food and so on just to make some examples) will also be beneficial for all.
Is there any additional information you want to share about upcoming events, things on the roadmap, etc?
I am really excited about the development of local Internet Exchanges across the country (the metro areas I mentioned earlier). These are local broadcast peering domains fully separated from MIX Milan, and are developed together with very committed and enthusiast partners. The common goal is to boost the local ISP community while giving CDN players the opportunity to deliver content deep inside the national and local networks, easing their job and improving the end user experience of digital content.
The Palermo and Bologna sites are fully operational and others will follow shortly. It is essentially a “demand driven” project, focused on “virgin” areas but also open to committed partners willing to boost the value of their datacenters with a truly neutral IX, like MIX, at their locations outside Milan. As far as Milan is concerned, we will continue to populate new locations with local MIX IT PoPs, transparently connected with redundant dark fibres to our core node to guarantee equal peering opportunities to everyone, no matter which DC they choose to colocate with.
Internet exchange points (IXPs) are the go-to solution for localities looking to bring fast, affordable, and resilient internet connectivity to their regions. By providing a robust location for networks to come together, connect, and exchange internet traffic, IXPs have cemented themselves as critical parts of the digital infrastructure ecosystem, especially in the context of bolstering regional internet accessibility and capability. IXPs help keep domestic Internet traffic local, reducing transit costs, lag time, and providing a better user experience.
But what about IXPs’ role in local economies? It’s true that as well as improving services and connection quality, IXPs can also encourage regional economic growth. Here are three ways they’re doing that.
1. With local connection comes improved performance of digital applications, a ‘must’ for growth potential.
Nearly every company needs high-performance, secure interconnection to carry out business in our digital age. Regional IXPs deliver this performance, which in turn provides amazing, endless growth opportunities for the localities they’re based in. When data is forced to travel far to be exchanged at large digital hubs, latency suffers. However, when data can be exchanged at a local IXP, the speed of connectivity and latency rates massively improve, leading to better performing digital products and services.
Resilience and stability is also improved under the presence of an IXP, which enables better performance overall for applications such as cloud computing, VoIP connections, video conferencing and online collaboration—all things required to run a modern business well.
Our digital future is being built upon applications which require extremely low latency connections; think IoT, smart devices, or AI/ML-driven platforms. When real-time response is required, connectivity between data centres where these workloads are processed and stored needs the shortest path to where the data is consumed. When a local IXP is available, companies can interconnect with each other at the lowest possible latency.
In summary, regional IXPs can future-proof the growth potential of smaller cities and localities’ economic prospects by enabling solid broadband infrastructure which supports the way businesses work today and tomorrow.
2. Better for everyone: developing digital economies can have a positive impact on surrounding localities.
Every sector needs to be focusing hard on digitalisation, whether it’s embarking upon their first digital transformation or constantly improving their existing framework. This makes the development of local digital infrastructure imperative to strengthening local economies and creating a better quality of life for citizens. Localities with a highly developed digital economy are more competitive and grow faster than their more analogue peers, and less well connected neighbouring regions can benefit from strong infrastructure also—suggesting a positive ‘domino effect’ can come from investment.
By working collaboratively, regions can create something greater than what they can achieve alone. Regional IXPs can therefore support national rollout strategies, helping bring more and more of a country’s population online with high-performance connectivity, so everyone can participate in the digital economy.
3. Connections to other businesses massively improves growth potential.
Research by the World Bank suggests more than 80% of global GDP is generated in cities, creating an excellent opportunity to encourage migration to regions and improve local economies by building out solid digital infrastructure. It’s the perfect time for more rural locations to capitalise on the desire for home working by providing strong broadband connections which enable easy remote working.
Improving digital infrastructure has fantastic potential ROI from an increase in skilled workers to the area, but it is also very beneficial to existing local businesses who can accelerate their operations through direct connections to the cloud. Regional IXPs facilitate connection to large, international hubs and many major players such as AWS, Microsoft and Google. Shorter, direct pathways to clouds and digital resources increase security, performance and overall general quality of internet connectivity.
Italy’s leading interconnection platform is ready for the future
With IXPs across Italy, (Milan metro area, Bologna and Palermo) totalling 10 points of presence (PoPs), MIX offers the perfect strategic gateway between central and southern Europe. The MIX interconnection platform offers customers an opportunity to exchange Internet traffic with enhanced network performance, increased data flow control, reducing latency and IP-Transit costs. For more information, you can reach out to our IXP experts here
Some of the largest telecom operators in Europe have banded together to encourage Big Tech organisations to share network costs. The companies, including Orange, Telefonica, and Deutsche Telekom, have cited the ongoing energy crisis in Europe as the primary driver in this push. An unprecedented collaboration in a competitive industry: how did we get here?
What is the European energy crisis?
Caused in part by the ongoing war in Ukraine, and Russia’s weaponisation of its gas pipelines, supplies are expensive and running low across the continent—causing anxiety for both households and businesses. The increasing cost of power has already broken records, briefly rising above $1000 per megawatt hour in Germany, causing one senior analyst at Rystad Energy, Fabian Rønningen, to declare, “These prices are reaching levels now that we thought we would never see.”
Measures are already being put in place to reduce the impact of shortages, for example central heating will be limited in Italy, whilst Portugal has already placed limits on Christmas lights this year in a bid to use less electricity. From a commercial perspective, industries heavily reliant on huge amounts of power are, understandably, incredibly concerned about the months ahead. Telecom operators are amongst those raising their concerns.
How is the energy crisis affecting telecom operators?
Data centres use huge amounts of energy and water to power and cool their computational elements, and it will only increase in the coming years as HPC workloads demand more energy. By 2030, data centres are projected to account for 3.2% of electricity demand within the EU, an 18.5% jump from 2018.
With these figures in mind, it’s easy to understand operators’ rising anxiety surrounding the energy crisis. Some data centre operators have started to stockpile generator fuel in anticipation of worsening shortages. As global data centre energy usage sits at around 200-250 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, contingency plans such as this are vital for critical, energy-intensive infrastructure to avoid service interruptions.
Climate change is also having an impact
Energy prices and availability are not the only difficulty telecom operators are having to contend with recently. When the UK experienced record high temperatures in late July, Google Cloud’s data centres in London went offline for a day, due to cooling failures. Outages limited customers’ access to key Google services for hours. Oracle’s cloud-based data centre in the capital was also struck down by the heat, causing outages for US customers. These unseasonable temperatures were blamed for the blackout. This represents another difficulty operators have to content with in tumultuous times.
Conclusion
Businesses and telecom operators face vastly rising operational costs, and worse, limited availability of mission critical power. Though global events may be out of control, enterprises can lessen the burden by seeking solutions which are built upon shared infrastructure and mutual interconnection. Get in touch with us to find out more.
We’ve talked at length about the ways IXPs help to meet the demands of the increasing digital economy, and how IXPs can be used to augment digital transformation initiatives. Today, we’re taking it back to basics and exploring the five key benefits of using internet exchange points and the value that peering can bring to your network.
As the leading interconnection platform in Italy, we’re well versed in the ways peering can transform the performance, costs, and usability of an enterprise’s digital infrastructure, and we’re committed to bringing these benefits to everyone. Let’s jump straight in.
Benefit One: Peering improves your end-user experience.
Service providers today serve a variety of end users who demand a consistent, high-quality user experience anywhere around the world. In the age of customer experience, peering at IXPs allows service providers to create new efficiencies while enabling them to deliver an optimised end-user experience. This improves your service offering, gives you the edge on competitors, and strengthens your value proposition.
Benefit Two: Peering lowers the latency of your edge.
Good end-user experience is all about latency, packet loss ratio, and throughput, so having direct connections to service providers is mission critical. Latency is one of the most important factors on IP networks in terms of stability and applications like gaming, VoIP, streaming, and many others.
With transit, you often won’t know the path your data is taking, which can lead to expensive, inefficient routes—or tromboning, in the worst case. But with peering, you get control over where your network exchanges IP with other important networks.
Benefit Three: Peering is a safe and fast route.
Peering enables direct access to many of your traffic partners without the need for intermediary networks that are free to change routing on their network without notice. By directly connecting to IXPs, you secure the traffic routes to your most important networks. You can enjoy a better working network, as you have less latency, fewer jitter problems, less packet loss, and more throughput – which has a strong impact on the stability of a network.
Benefit Four: Peering means you are the driver of your car.
With peering, you are sending your traffic directly to the peering partner. The IXPs unlock new potential and open up the opportunity to all network operators to peer, reducing expensive pay per use IP-Transit , as well as the need to buy and manage remote equipment and remote cross-connect fees. IXPs can also help lower the overall costs for end users by avoiding transit payments.
Simply put, IXPs help efficiently route traffic, achieve lower latency, reduce costs, and increase coverage and reach. In the face of expanding global network demands, IXPs are helping to enhance the global flow of information in the most cost-effective and efficient way.
Benefit Five: Peering boosts your connection to big players.
Major content providers such as Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon all utilise peering to ensure they have super network performance. These businesses engage in peering all over the world, and will often be present in regional IXPs to keep their traffic as local as possible, improving performance and keeping costs low. If you frequently exchange traffic with big players like this, it makes sense to set up a direct connection with them at IXP, so you can enjoy the benefits too.
Italy’s leading interconnection platform is ready for the future
With IXPs across Italy, (Milan metro area, Bologna and Palermo) totalling 10 points of presence (PoPs), MIX offers the perfect strategic gateway between central and southern Europe. The MIX interconnection platform offers customers an opportunity to exchange Internet traffic with enhanced network performance, increased data flow control, reducing latency and IP-Transit costs. For more information, you can reach out to our IXP experts here
Internet exchange points (IXPs) have been a vital part of the digital ecosystem for a long time.
A number of factors are causing the huge surge in internet traffic, including;
More latency-sensitive applications being developed and rolled out
Significant growth of migrations to cloud-based services
A huge increase of content consumption
An extensive use of remote working
Strong, efficient network connections are crucial for carrying out the daily online transactions of modern life. As traffic continues to soar, IXPs continue to be a vital part of the internet ecosystem. ISPs can easily extend their networks at internet exchanges by swapping routing information with other ISPs at local hubs, rather than sending regional traffic long distances to extend.
Through the exchange of traffic at the closest IXP, service providers’ see lower latency, minimised faults, and an enhanced end-user experience.
An IX environment works like an international airport hub connecting domestic flights with international ones. Airlines exchange passengers between their flights at regional airports, rather than in different countries, just like networks exchange traffic across an IXP. Exactly like any passenger hates delays and multiple stops at the same time, internet users love high-performance and low latency routes.
That’s why we at MIX decided to extend our presence to new remote locations as Bologna and Palermo.
With new developments and advancing technologies, what does the future of an IX like MIX look like?
To keep up with the quality of internet services in multiple metropolitan areas, an expansion of local interconnection is necessary. IXPs operate like a boost infrastructure providing stable, fast, efficient internet to more remote regions. With more investment in localised internet infrastructure, here are a few benefits we can expect to see.
Having a developed digital economy gives regions a competitive edge
The development of regional hubs is crucial to strengthening the economy and creating a better quality of life for citizens. Undoubtedly, future economic growth is linked to a region’s underpinning infrastructure. Just as no industry can afford not to explore digital transformation initiatives, communities must ensure their infrastructure can handle 21st century internet requirements.
Local IXPs help to improve the quality of digital applications
Many companies require high-performance and secure interconnection to do business, and those that wield this technology well are often incredibly successful. Therefore, establishing a regional IXP can offer tremendous opportunities for advancement.
As data is not forced to travel such large distances, local IXs can reduce lag and improve connectivity. Local interconnection also enhances resilience and traffic balance, creating a more stable network which ultimately leads to a better quality of experience. This is particularly salient for latency-sensitive applications like video conferencing and online collaboration tools.
Increased connectivity to clouds and content providers helps increase growth potential
As so many modern workers value the ability to work from home, having a stable and strong internet connection can be a huge draw towards (or against!) different regions. Encouraging migration to your region through making it attractive to citizens is integral for building the local economy, and by investing in digital infrastructure, decision makers can make a positive contribution to regional economic development.
Italy’s leading interconnection platform is ready for the future
With IXPs across Italy, (Milan metro area, Bologna and Palermo) totalling 10 points of presence (PoPs), MIX offers the perfect strategic gateway between central and southern Europe. The MIX interconnection platform offers customers an opportunity to exchange Internet traffic with enhanced network performance, increased data flow control, reducing latency and IP-Transit costs. For more information, you can reach out to our IXP experts here
Technically speaking, keeping local traffic local refers to the way Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) enable all the network providers connected to exchange traffic directly among themselves without any third network party in the middle. Indirect routing paths are managed through a Transit Provider service.
Without IXPs, traffic going from one network to another would potentially rely on an intermediary network provider to carry it from source to destination. These transit providers can work perfectly fine, it’s how a lot of international internet traffic is processed, as it’s not financially viable for organisations to maintain direct connections to every ISP in the world—obviously!
However, this can often backfire and lead to what we call the “trombone effect”. This happens when the backbone IP sends data to another network in another city for processing. In the worst case scenario, traffic created in and destined for the same city is made to travel a huge distance to be exchanged before it then returns to the same geographical location. This can cause prohibitive latency disruption, and create poor experiences for end users.
But with a presence in an IXP, this problem is mitigated. Customers are able to shorten their transit paths and improve latency, minimise faults, and increase end-user experience. In cases where organisations have extremely latency sensitive applications, this saving is the difference between having a viable product and not.
What does it mean in practice?
Industry jargon aside, how does this look in the real world?
IXPs enable local networks to more efficiently exchange information at the common point within a country, rather than needing to exchange local internet traffic overseas. IXPs can therefore increase the affordability and quality of the internet for local communities. It’s clear that, in its relatively short lifespan, reliable and affordable internet access has become a vital utility.
IXPs can help lower internet access costs for end users by decreasing internet service providers’ (ISPs) operating costs, allowing a greater number of regional users to access affordable internet. In addition, IXPs can ensure that traffic between local senders and local recipients use relatively cheap local connections, rather than expensive international links.
Academic institutions and small local businesses can also benefit hugely from IXPs. As the majority of their traffic is local (residents accessing the eCommerce platform of a local store, for example), exchanging with local providers at an IXP will lessen traffic congestion, increase efficiency, and lead to much improved end-user experience on applications and websites. A win for everyone!The massive growth of FinTech, online gaming, and streaming services has been global in the past few years, and we’ve definitely noticed its impact in Italy. Large businesses like this can benefit from IXPs just as much as local businesses too.
FinTech businesses require extremely low latency connections to process thousands of complex, numerical transactions per minute. With online payments in Italy totalling $268 billion per year, financial institutions require a pretty robust digital infrastructure to continue providing an efficient service.
The live streaming industry also experienced a boom, with an expected growth to $25 billion in the next four years alone, putting huge pressure on digital infrastructure to effectively support the increase in data. As more than half of viewers will abandon poor streams within the first 90 seconds, it’s extremely important for hosting providers to ensure high quality and low latency.
Keeping local traffic local benefits everyone, from your local store to the country’s largest financial institutions.
Peering at Italy’s leading Internet Exchange
With IXPs across Italy, (Milan metro area, Bologna and Palermo) totalling 10 points of presence (PoPs), MIX offers the perfect strategic gateway between central and southern Europe. The MIX interconnection platform offers customers an opportunity to exchange Internet traffic with enhanced network performance, increased data flow control, reducing latency and IP-Transit costs. For more information, you can reach out to our IXP experts here
After listening to feedback, we decided to give our portal a revamp to ensure we continue providing excellent digital experiences for our customers at all stages of their journey with MIX.
We are now delighted to officially launch the new and improved MIX Customer Portal, whose customer-centric improvements will help us provide high-quality internet services in Italy. Some new features you can expect include;
Improved control — Customers can set up multiple accounts within the portal.
Enhanced statistics — We’ve rewritten our software to provide better traffic data analytics.
Customers can also enjoy our latest feature release, the MIX Finder. MIX Finder is an internal search engine that will enable all of our customers to do business with one another.
If you’re looking for a particular peering-related service, you can use the new tool to search the portal for all relevant vendors. Every MIX customer has a dedicated page listing the services they provide, as well as relevant contacts. This digital marketplace will help users to procure and provide services with fellow MIX customers—just another way we’re helping improve the quality of the Internet in Italy
The agreement will allow companies in the Veneto Region to benefit from the direct connection to the main Italian internet exchange.
Milan, 7 June 2022 – MIX, the most important Italian Internet exchange, based in Milan, and VSIX, the IXP of Padua, have signed a framework agreement to undertake forms of collaboration and experimentation of a technological and scientific nature in the field of technologies innovative IT and telematic systems. Furthermore, to facilitate the interchange of Internet traffic between the North East area with other areas of Italy and abroad, a level 2 interconnection was created between the MIX and VSIX sites, through bidirectional remote peering solutions, including those of selective type. The new collaboration activated in the North East between the two Internet Exchanges MIX and VSIX will make it possible to share common experiences and know-how on a plurality of increasingly important issues such as network security and the promotion of peering towards local players. The partnership will allow a wider monitoring of Internet services in Italy through a common observatory that can be of help in evaluating or supporting initiatives and projects related to digitisation. It will also be possible to experiment with remote peering services for the interconnection between different areas of Italy with the aim of facilitating the transition towards the use of digital by businesses, citizens and public administrations, aiming to reduce the digital divide (the index overall digitalisation of the economy and society DESI – 2021 places Italy in 20th place out of 27 at European level, but it is in 23rd place with reference to connectivity).
MIX has the highest concentration of networks in Italy connected in a single point, it is one of the few IXPs in Europe with its own datacenter (Carrier-neutral and datacenter-neutral) and offers high standards of certified reliability and safety (ISO 27001 and OPEN-IX OIX-1). Veneto companies and, in particular, those of the Public Administration, will therefore be able to contact VSIX, which will act as enabler of the services, and thus seize the opportunities offered by interconnection to MIX in complete safety.
“The development of the internet requires greater capillarity and high-performance interconnections in order to quickly use content and services. The collaboration between the MIX and VSIX platforms goes precisely in this direction”, declared Alessandro Talotta, Chairman & Executive President of MIX.
VSIX, already present with a PoP in Milan that facilitates the interaction between the two IXPs, represents the main hub for the North-East of the internet, a real local edge node that facilitates the exchange of data also between territorial operators who will therefore be able to benefit from remote peering agreements through MIX for their infrastructural developments in Italy and in the world. “The partnership started with MIX constitutes an important opportunity to expand the potential of connectivity and exchange of good practices for the North-East at the Italian level, as well as access new services that can benefit businesses, citizens and the public administration. Furthermore, we could help the territory’s digital transition process more strongly”, added the President of VSIX, Professor Eleonora Di Maria.
