Hurricane Electric, the world’s largest IPv6-native Internet backbone announced today that it has further expanded its presence in Southeastern Europe by connecting to the Albanian Neutral Internet eXchange (ANIX).
ANIX is the first neutral and not-for-profit Internet Exchange point in Albania and is hosted and managed by Namex in the carrier-grade data center of RASH, the Albanian Academic Network, in Tirana. ANIX went live in March 2018. Prior to the establishment of ANIX, traffic between Albanian endpoints had to pass through foreign countries. ISPs throughout Albania and the world come to ANIX to interconnect their networks.
Hurricane Electric’s presence in ANIX will provide reduced latency and improved fault tolerance, load balancing and congestion management infrastructure. The added direct connectivity paths also increase the reach of Hurricane Electric’s next-generation (IPv6) Internet infrastructure and services. Additionally, ANIX members can now exchange IP traffic, or “peer,” with Hurricane Electric’s rich global Internet backbone.
Namex is an Internet Exchange Point based in Rome, Italy, established in 1995. Namex and RASH, the Albanian Academic Network, established in 2007, have been conducting the ANIX pro-bono effort to improve the connectivity of Albanian ISPs to each other and to the global Internet. ANIX features state-of-the-art devices, installed in the RASH data center which is equipped with numerous features to ensure uptime, including N + 1 UPS, temperature and humidity sensors, and real-time monitoring of the facility’s critical infrastructure.
In addition to providing increased network capacity through 100GE (100 Gigabit Ethernet), 10GE (10 Gigabit Ethernet) and GigE (1 Gigabit Ethernet) ports, Hurricane Electric’s vast global network, offers over 20,000 BGP sessions with over 9,000 different networks via more than 250 major exchange points and thousands of customers and private peering ports.
“Hurricane Electric’s is excited to connect to ANIX while expanding our footprint in Southeastern Europe,” said Mike Leber, President of Hurricane Electric. “The new connection will enable local ISPs and other networks to take advantage of Hurricane Electric’s rich global network, while helping to strengthen Albania’s Internet connectivity.”
