DE-CIX Completes Core Infrastructure Upgrade to Its Flagship Apollon Platform

FRANKFURT, GERMANY--(Marketwired - Jul 24, 2013) - DE-CIX, the world's leading Internet Exchange operator headquartered in Frankfurt am Main (Germany), announces today the completion of upgrades to the core infrastructure of its flagship DE-CIX Apollon platform. Fully online as of July 24, 2013, the new core deployment consists of four Alcatel-Lucent 7950 XRS switches and represents a major upgrade that now enables DE-CIX to offer advanced Ethernet-based services across a highly reliable architecture.

Serving over 500 ISPs and carriers from 55 countries, DE-CIX Apollon is the largest carrier-neutral exchange for direct, settlement-free interconnection of IP networks. The DE-CIX Apollon platform is comprised of four Supernodes, which are built from an advanced 100G ADVA Optical Networking optical transport system and Alcatel-Lucent's edge and core nodes. The new DE-CIX Apollon infrastructure is engineered to allow customers to fully benefit from additional Layer 2 capabilities, which enable the multipoint-to-multipoint Ethernet connectivity provisioning required for today's demanding service provider environments.

DE-CIX experiences more than 50% increases in traffic each year. With these rapid and continually growing volumes, the new DE-CIX Apollon infrastructure will now offer 100GE ports for customers. Every DE-CIX Apollon node provides up to 8 Terabits/sec (Tbps) of total capacity and will support a mix of 10GE and 100GE ports.

"Over the last 18 years we have developed Frankfurt into a key global communications hub, with a high concentration of carriers, ISPs, CDNs and cloud players," states Harald A. Summa, CEO for DE-CIX. "DE-CIX has seen tremendous growth and has improved its hardened peering infrastructure by multiplying port density to accommodate the need for additional ports and the expected overall increase in data volumes in the next five to seven years. At the same time, DE-CIX Apollon might serve as a blueprint for our new Internet exchanges in other parts of the world."

"DE-CIX Engineering has designed Apollon with the latest in advanced technology to ensure clients receive the highest quality and most reliable interconnection possible," says Arnold Nipper, CTO for DE-CIX. "With the deployment of the new core nodes we've just finished, DE-CIX is able to continue operating a highly stable peering environment, which is so very important to our customers. In short, quality equals stability and is a reason for our customers to trust in DE-CIX."

This latest milestone marks continued progress in DE-CIX's focused approach to bring all four Supernodes online. The DE-CIX engineering team relied on precise planning to install the four new core nodes, including lighting up over 16.9 kilometers of dark fiber and the establishment of 454 new connections. During the next and final phase of the upgrade process, and following a rigorous testing process, DE-CIX will install edge nodes and migrate existing customers to the new platform.

For more information about DE-CIX and DE-CIX Apollon, please visit http://apollon.de-cix.net.

About DE-CIX
Founded in 1995, DE-CIX in Frankfurt is the leading operator of Ethernet-based carrier and ISP interconnection (Peering) worldwide. DE-CIX facilitates the exchange of IP traffic between networks through a distributed, failsafe and scalable infrastructure in various metro markets across Germany and in the Middle East. This includes broadband networks, hosting providers, content providers and cloud computing players. More than 500 ISPs from over 50 countries use DE-CIX to handle a large fraction of their Internet traffic and make DE-CIX the world's largest interconnection facility that supports peering. DE-CIX's customer base includes the world's leading players, such as 1&1, Akamai, China Telecom, Facebook, Google and Telefonica.

The company began its international growth with the takeover in 2012 of the operations of UAE-IX in Dubai, UAE, the country's first carrier-neutral interconnection and peering platform. DE-CIX is a wholly owned subsidiary of eco e.V., the world's largest Internet industry association. Further information is available at: www.de-cix.net.