Equinix Expands Peering in Zurich

Equinix, Inc. (EQIX) is expanding its Equinix Exchange service to its Zurich data center, creating a peering environment with more than 60 members. The Zurich facility is among the 14 European data centers Equinix acquired last year with its $55 million purchase of IXEurope.

Peering allows two providers exchanging large volumes of traffic to save money by connecting directly, rather than routing traffic through their paid Internet connections. Peering is often free as long as the amount of traffic exchanged is not out of balance, providing substantial cost savings for bandwidth for high-traffic sites and networks. Public peering exchanges allow participants to peer with other providers connected to the exchange.

"The growth of video and other low-latency applications is placing increasing demands on network infrastructure and requires that data be exchanged between networks as quickly and efficiently as possible," said Eric Schwartz, president of Equinix Europe. "Equinix Exchange provides a platform for ISPs, content companies and enterprises to implement a high-performance, highly versatile, yet low cost IP interconnection infrastructure within a secure, network-neutral environment."

Equinix says online video is "in the early stages of significant growth." Chief Business Officer Margie Backaus said earlier this year that traffic in the company's Equinix Exchange public peering is up 90 percent year-over-year, with the bulk of that growth due to video.

Equinix Exchange is currently available in Equinix data centers located in the greater Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Washington, D.C. and Zurich areas. The service is used by more than 270 companies, including Yahoo!, Google, AT&T, Deutsche Telecom, British Telecom, Cable & Wireless and NTT.