IXPN traffic grows locally by 10,000% in five years

The Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), on Friday said it has grown traffic on its network by over 10,000 percent in the last five years, adding that it is currently exchanging over 110 gigabits per second of traffic.

IXPN’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Muhammed Rudman, disclosed this in a statement made available to newsmen in Lagos today.

He explained that the measurement of this growth in traffic is from 2013-2018 and attributed it largely to the connection of some international content service providers to the exchange point.

He said, recently, Facebook, Akamai, China Telecoms, Angola Cables and a huge number of the service providers in the country are connected to the Exchange Point and are exchanging traffic locally.

“For us, hitting 10,000 percent traffic and exchanging over 110 gigabits per second in the last five years is a huge success. It goes to show we are achieving our mandate, which is to facilitate internet operations in Nigeria and to localize traffic as well as reduce local internet routing cost,” he said.

He stated that the coming together of local and international players to connect to the IXP is in tandem with Nigeria’s local content quest because about 40 percent of the Internet traffic being exchanged in the country is presently local occasioned by the Internet Exchange Point.

Rudman explained that what this means is that the speed of the Internet is now faster and the cost affordable, adding thatIXPN will continue to facilitate internet operations in Nigeria with the sole aim of localising traffic as well as reducing local internet routing cost.

“Ultimately also, this will reduce reliance on expensive international transit for exchanging local traffic between operators, and improved efficiency of their operations and communications. Assuring that with this growth rate, Nigeria can target 70 percent of local traffic in the next two years,” he stated.

An Internet exchange point (IXP) is a physical infrastructure that allows several Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and network operators to exchange traffic between their networks, generally referred to as autonomous systems.