This article is more than 1 year old

Bangkok gets 'net exchange with help from ISOC

Bit barns and their brethren busting out all over Asia

The Internet Society has nominated Alcatel-Lucent to supply kit for a new Internet exchange in Bangkok.

BKNIX will use the company's 7750 Service Router. The exchange is being built with the help of ISOC's Interconnection and Traffic Exchange (ITE) program, and should be operational by December of 2014.

With rapid traffic growth in the region, ISOC says the launch of BKNIX will “improve inter-connectivity within Thailand as well as in the region”, particularly as the economies of ASEAN become more integrated.

While ISPs have created peering arrangements between themselves, BKNIX is designed to foster “economical direct interconnections” in the sector, according to the Thai NIC's VP Kanchana Kanchanasut. Having a neutral exchange will make further growth “more sustainable”, Kanchanasut added, and will provide lessons for the rollout of other IXs in the region.

While the Asia-Pac is a huge market in terms of subscriber numbers and growth potential, many areas suffer relatively undeveloped Internet infrastructure. As well as providing better connectivity between ISPs, the internet exchange will also benefit content providers, according to ISOC Asia-Pacific's head Rajnesh Singh.

ISOC also cites more efficient local traffic routing and a more robust infrastructure as reasons it supported the BKNIX project.

The new exchange is just one of three new major piece of internet infrastructure in Asia, all announced this week. IBM on Monday revealed a new data centre in Mumbai, from where it hopes to capture a big slice of government work. Pacnet yesterday cut the ribbon on a 2,000-rack bit barn in Tianjin, China. The company's keen on customers using its home-baked software-defined-networking tools to arrange temporary and/or bursty connections between the new bit barn, their own facilities, or other sites to which Pacnet connects. ®

More about

More about

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like