Nigeria’s Internet exchange point grows local traffic by 10,000% in five years

The Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), has grown traffic on its network by over 10,000 per cent in the last five years, and currently exchanges over 110 gigabits per second of traffic.

The Chief Executive Officer of IXPN, Muhammed Rudman, who disclosed this in Lagos, explained that the measurement of this growth in traffic was from 2013 to 2018.

He largely attributed the connection of some international content service providers to the exchange point as one of the reasons for the growth.

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.

The Guardian gathered that Nigeria has about five spread across the regions in the country.

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

“For us, hitting 10,000 per cent 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 noted.

He added that the coming together of local and international players to connect to the IXP is in tandem with the 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.

According to Rudman, what this means is that the speed of the Internet is now faster and the cost affordable, stressing that IXPN 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, he said this development 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 per cent of local traffic in the next two years.