Eastern Cape to Get New Internet Exchange Point Based in Gqeberha

INX-ZA introduces the launch of a new internet exchange point (IXP) in the Eastern Cape, Nelson Mandela Bay (NMBINX), making it the fourth internet exchange point in South Africa. The Nelson Mandela Bay internet exchange point is located in Gqeberha at Dimension Data’s facility in Newton Park. The operation will commence the first week of June 2023.

The INX-ZA is backed by the Internet Service Providers’ Association and also has three Internet exchange points in Cape Town (CINX), Durban (BINX), and Johannesburg (JINX). Johannesburg( JINX) was the first ever to be launched in 1996 during the early days of commercial internet.

The INX-ZA shared that the facility offers “network operators in the Eastern Cape region the opportunity to improve their internet connectivity and performance by connecting to other local networks, content providers and cloud service providers through a single peering point”.

“This will result in faster and more efficient routing of traffic, reduced latency, and improved network resilience. This region has a history of outages due to multiple simultaneous backhaul failures and this development should hopefully lessen the impact of such network disruptions.”

INX-ZA explained that they are backhauled locally and consumers will be using the service provider that’s based in Nelson Mandela Bay rather than the content being backhauled from Johannesburg.

“The ISP saves on costs and this could be passed on to the consumer.”