DE-CIX launches neutral internet exchanges in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro

In what is said to be a first for the country, internet exchange (IX) operator DE-CIX has announced the opening of its first datacentre and carrier neutral IXs in Brazil at São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, designed to enable both local and domestic peering while opening access to DE-CIX’s global IX ecosystem, which the company said is the largest interconnection system of its kind.

Founded in 1995, DE-CIX offers interconnection services in 60 locations in Europe, Africa, North and South America, the Middle East, and Asia. Accessible from datacentres in over 600 cities worldwide, DE-CIX connects network operators (carriers), internet service providers (ISPs), content providers and enterprise networks from more than 100 countries, and offers peering, cloud and other interconnection services.

Interconnected from day one, the two new IXs in Brazil are designed to support not only local “peering” or network interconnection, but also remote peering both domestically and internationally. The distributed and neutral IXs are housed in multiple datacentres in their respective markets, with DE-CIX São Paulo in Elea Data Centres SPO1, Ascenty SP4 and Equinix SP4, and DE-CIX Rio de Janeiro in Elea Data Centres RJO1 and Equinix RJ2.

DE-CIX said its new exchanges are designed to fill a gap in the Brazilian market, with their range of SLA-backed enterprise-grade interconnection offerings, as well as increasing redundancy and resiliency options for Brazilian network operators. Both centres will be run by DE-CIX Brazil and integrated into the operator’s global IX ecosystem through connections to DE-CIX’s IXs in New York, Lisbon, Madrid, Frankfurt and beyond, employing both south to north and south to south Atlantic connectivity corridors.

“With DE-CIX São Paulo and DE-CIX Rio de Janeiro open for business, customers can now benefit from a more resilient and globally integrated digital interconnection ecosystem in Brazil,” said DE-CIX CEO Ivo Ivanov.

“By enhancing local interconnection, attracting international players to join the community, and committing to strengthening the digital infrastructure in the country, we provide high-performance, secure and scalable interconnection services,” he said.

“The growing digital economy in Brazil requires state-of-the-art connectivity, ensuring that data exchange happens locally and efficiently. The two new IXs open up a complementary offering that further enriches Brazil as the second-largest market in the world by network count.”

The deployments in Brazil come just after DE-CIX entered into a partnership with Microsoft to optimise cloud connectivity through the Microsoft Azure Peering (Maps), which bypasses the public internet, reducing network “hops” with a direct cloud connection. The net result of the partnership, according to the two firms, is to ensure that even at lower speeds, connectivity and security can be optimised for certain applications with none of the egress fees usually associated with cloud migration.

Offering a rationale for the launch, DE-CIX said Maps fundamentally aims to make essential cloud-based apps work more reliably for businesses. It has been designed to tackle “one of the most common yet overlooked connectivity challenges in the modern workplace” – ensuring that business-critical software as a service applications perform smoothly and reliably.