Eastern Cape unveils newest internet exchange point in South Africa
A Dimension Data facility in Nelson Mandela Bay will host the new internet exchange point for the Eastern Cape.
The Internet Service Providers’ Association-backed INX-ZA has unveiled the Nelson Mandela Bay IXP, or NMBInx, in Gqeberha, giving the Eastern Cape its own internet exchange point (IXP). NMBInx joins INX-ZA’s existing internet exchanges in Cape Town (Cinx), Durban (Dinx), and Johannesburg (Jinx), which was the first IXP in South Africa established in 1996 during the early days of the commercial internet. The new IXP is located in Newton Park suburb’s Dimension Data facility and is expected to be fully operational in the next month.
Through a single peering point, the facility presents a chance for network operators in the Eastern Cape region to enhance their internet connectivity and performance by connecting to other local networks, content providers, and cloud service providers.
As a result of this, traffic routing will be faster and more efficient, latency will be reduced, and network resilience will be improved. The Eastern Cape region has a history of experiencing outages due to multiple simultaneous backhaul failures. This new development is expected to minimize the impact of such network disruptions.
About author
DW Team
The GIP Digital Watch Observatory team, consisting of over 30 digital policy experts from around the world, excels in the fields of research and analysis on digital policy issues. The team is backed by the creative prowess of Creative Lab Diplo and the technical expertise of the Diplo tech team.