UMHLANGA has become the first town in South Africa to get a multi-site Internet exchange point following a partnership between the eThekwini Municipality and INX-ZA.

In a bid to promote the local economy the parties have extended the Durban Internet Exchange (DINX) to a second location, in uMhlanga.

Last year the plush residential area, along with its neighbour, La Lucia, were also some of the first suburbs to receive fibre internet connections, peaking at 1G/s (one gigabit per second).

According to the autonomous division of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) of South Africa, the new connection would facilitate faster connections as well as more efficient online access.

How it works?

Multiple Internet exchange points (IEP) enable Internet Service Providers (ISP) to interconnect their networks, which speeds up connections.

They also lower the ISPs operating costs and would essentially improve users’ quality of experience.

In the past IEPs in South Africa have been limited to a single location.

Nishal Goburdhan, INX-ZA’s manager said, “The extension of DINX makes it easy for Internet companies who already have infrastructure in uMhlanga to connect to peers at the existing DINX location. Peers at the new site will have the same peering experience and will be able to be directly linked, at no additional complexity to all existing, and future DINX peers. Network operators now get more flexibility in the choice of location that they may want to host their infrastructure at.”

He added that companies connecting to DINX will get immediate access to resilient core Internet infrastructure services, like the domain name services hosted at the current DINX location, which means that users on their networks are less likely to experience down-time if the global domain name system comes under attack.

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