Exchange Growth for Switch & Data, CRG West

Two leading providers of data center space, Switch and Data and CRG West, report strengthening activity in their Internet exchange businesses, which are seeing growth in participants and traffic.

Switch and Data (SDXC) said Monday that traffic on its PAIX Internet exchanges grew at about twice the rate of overall Internet traffic in the past year. This growthhas been driven by international networks peering with leading U.S. Internet content sites in the company’s Palo Alto and New York exchanges. PAIX traffic has grown by 112% in the past year versus a 65% global Internet traffic growth rate, according to Switch and Data.

Peak average traffic on the New York PAIX exchange has grown by 295 percent in 2008, boosted by European networks coming to New York peering traffic with U.S. content companies. The PAIX Palo Alto site, which was the world’s first commercial Internet exchange and has long been a leading site for Asian networks to peer traffic, has experienced 67% traffic growth. International networks are making the decision to peer in the United States to reduce transit time between countries and accelerate the performance of U.S. and other global websites in their home markets.

"IP traffic volume is growing very quickly due to the increasing penetration of broadband Internet access and the proliferation of new rich media based online applications," said Ernie Sampera, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Switch and Data.

On Friday, CRG West announced that its Any2 Exchange Internet community has signed its 150th member in California. Started in 2005, Any2 California is among the largest, single point peering communities in the United States. The Any2 Exchange allows ISPs, content delivery networks, entertainment companies, academic networks, and enterprises to easily establish interconnections with other networks.

"The Any2 Exchange is providing our members a powerful utility, designed to improve their network performance by eliminating the use of ‘transit’ networks for local interconnections, reducing operational expenses, and providing additional network redundancy in the event of local or global Internet disruptions," said John Savageau, Chief Technology Officer at CRG West.

The Any2 Exchange in California now has members from19 different countries ranging from India, China, and North America, to Europe and Russia. Similar to popular European Internet exchange point models, Any2 California is a distributed Internet exchange point, interconnecting exchange switches in CRG West data centers within Los Angeles such as One Wilshire and the Wilshire Annex, as well as CRG West data centers in Bay Area,