Internet exchange points help route data traffic efficiently and cost-effectively

South Africa’s oldest internet exchange, Jinx, will establish a presence in Johannesburg’s newest data centre being built by Nasdaq-listed Equinix.

Equinix announced last December that it planned to build a US$160-million (R2.9-billion) data centre in Joburg, with the facility expected to be operational by mid-2024.

“Jinx, or the Johannesburg Internet Exchange, will be available in Equinix’s new JN1 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre at launch,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

Jinx, which was established 27 years ago, is Africa’s longest-running internet exchange and has never experienced downtime. Internet exchanges are a way of directing internet traffic along speedier, more efficient and less expensive routes.

Jinx used to be the largest internet exchange point in South Africa, but was displaced a few years ago by NAPAfrica, an exchange point housed in data centre facilities owned by Teraco that recently topped 4Tbit/s of internet traffic flowing through its systems.

“Jinx will be the first and foremost IXP (internet exchange point) partner in Equinix’s brand-new carrier-neutral facility,” Equinix said. “The partnership of IXP and neutral colocation provider is a critically important feature of internet digital ecosystems hosted at Equinix facilities worldwide.”

Integral

Equinix recently announced former Hewlett Packard Enterprise MD Sandile Dube as its MD in South Africa.

“We will be launching with a remarkably strong partner base that includes some of the biggest cloud and connectivity companies in Africa, and Jinx forms an integral part of that strategy,” Dube said in the statement.

Meanwhile, Teraco has announced it has completed an expansion project at its DB1 facility in Durban that has doubled the data centre’s size.

Situated on Durban’s north coast, Teraco DB1 is a “strategic interconnection hub on the African subsea cable map, with direct access to the Seacom, Eassy, Metiss and (the soon-to-be-deployed) 2Africa cable systems that connect the east coast of Africa”.

Teraco’s newly expanded data centre in Durban

“Teraco’s DB1 facility is connected to the Teraco campus in Isando, Johannesburg through a wide choice of carriers via diverse regional fibre routes, allowing clients to increase the number of partners they connect with and expand their reach into new markets,” the company said.