The Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), one of the world’s largest Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), has doubled its network capacity by deploying new Brocade MLXe Core Routers. As part of a single project, AMS-IX deployed seven Brocade MLXe-32 routers (leveraging new high-performance switch fabric modules) to complement the existing infrastructure of Brocade MLX-8, MLX-16 and MLX-32 routers. This includes the deployment of 120 8×10G Series blades, which doubles the Brocade MLX capacity threshold to 256 wire-speed 10 GbE ports in a single chassis. AMS-IX began the upgrade during the middle of 2010.
AMS-IX currently hosts 365 members — consisting of carriers, ISPs, telcos, content providers, CDNs, hosting and application providers as well as mobile networks — generating close to a Terabit per second (Tbps) of Internet traffic. AMS-IX additionally hosts the first mobile peering points worldwide, the Global GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX) and the Mobile Data Exchange (MDX), as well as solutions for broadcasting with a multicast peering service.
“The amount of traffic we have to deal with doubles every 18 months, and we have a duty of service to our members to ensure that the network infrastructure is able to cope with today’s demands and those yet to come,” commented Henk Steenman, chief technology officer (CTO) at AMS-IX. “Our existing infrastructure was reaching capacity, so we urgently needed to increase port density. In addition, we needed to look to the future and develop a migration path to 100 GbE technology.”http://www.brocade.com
