The London Internet Exchange (LINX) has completed its 100G capacity upgrade project in Jeddah, following an increase in customers and port demands at the interconnection hub in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
LINX has ben powering Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) for its strategic partner, Center3, in Saudi Arabia since 2018. Jeddah was the first port of call for this deployment and since then, LINX peering services have gone live in Riyadh with teams preparing to deploy in Dammam this year.
The IXP in Jeddah creates a neutral and central meeting point in the MG1 (MENA Gateway) data centre for carriers, Cloud, content providers, enterprise networks and more to peer their network traffic locally and improve end user online performance.
“We are pleased to be upgrading our Internet exchange capacity with an additional 16 x 100G port capability due to customer demand in Jeddah. This enhancement further strengthens Jeddah’s role as a digital gateway, ensuring faster, more efficient connections for networks and users across the region,” said Halil Kama, Regional Director for LINX in the Middle East.
With regular traffic peaks over 650Gbps, networks connected into the IXP in Jeddah need to ensure their ports have the capacity to cope with the spikes in online traffic often generated by sporting events or gaming upgrades.
There were 36.84 million Internet users in Saudi Arabia in January 2024 with an Internet penetration rate of 99.0% of the total population at the start of 2024.
Kepios analysis suggests that Internet users in Saudi Arabia increased by 527,000, an increase of 1.4%, between January 2023 and January 2024.
The evolution of the digital scene in Saudi Arabia is fuelled by its Vision 2030 strategy. Growth in sports and event tourism in the region has created a greater need for lower latency streaming solutions.
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