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ECIX free 20Gbps Netflix bandwith Frankfurt

ECIX free 20Gbps Netflix bandwith Frankfurt. More news from Deutchland as Netflix announce a deal with Frankfurt based commercial internet exchange ECIX.

ECIX free 20Gbps Netflix bandwith Frankfurt. I posted quite recently that ECIX had won the right to host Netflix traffic in Frankfurt. This was a surprise as DE-CIX, one of the largest internet exchanges in the world (universe!) would have been the favourite to win the business.

This latest announcement is all about an offer that ECIX are offering in conjunction with Netflix. Netflix have launched their services in Germany today. For internet service providers this is significant news as in other markets Netflix traffic represents a significant proportion of the total bandwidth used on networks with particular spikes in the evenings when consumers are more likely to be watching movies.

ISPs therefore need to be geared up to carry this traffic which is where ECIX come in. For anyone wanting to peer with Netflix in Frankfurt, ECIX are offering 20Gbps of bandwidth free of charge for the first year. According to the ECIX website this is worth E22k in the first year. As a promotional aside the cost of the equivalent offer at LONAP, where I am a board member, would be £6,500 for the year but this is a different market and ECIX is a commercial venture as opposed to the “mutual” not for profit nature of LONAP.

Netflix will also provide a free ECIX port for up to three years for all networks that qualify for and install a Netflix Open Connect Appliance. This appliance is installed in an ISP network to cache Netflix content and improved the quality the delivered service to the end customer. It should also cut down on the amount of peering bandwidth used.

It would be interesting to understand the business case here which will be based on the cost of the Appliance versus the value of bandwidth saved.

This ECIX/Netflix offer is quite innovative. In the German peering market it will generate a lot of publicity for both parties. Also it’s a fair bet that ISPs will take more than two 10Gig ports and certainly the traffic after the first year isn’t going to go away. The only way is up in this game.

ECIX free 20Gbps Netflix bandwith Frankfurt – you know it makes sense:)

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com