Community Investment Program<\/a> (CIP) provided funding for HFXIX to purchase its core switching and hosting equipment, part of CIRA’s greater commitment to grow the Canadian IXP ecosystem.<\/p>\nWith the Akamai affiliation, institutions peering at HFXIX can now benefit from having a direct, local connection to the most \u201cpervasive, highly-distributed content delivery network\u201d in the world.<\/p>\n
Just how pervasive? Akamai has more than 216,000 servers in over 120 countries, connected to more than 1,500 networks around the world, which now includes Halifax and the Canadian IXP network.<\/p>\n
Although this is not the first connection by Akamai in Halifax, this is the first connection at the local IXP, which broadens access. By peering at HFXIX users are directly networked with Akamai and all the clients it serves. That includes the world’s top 20 e-commerce sites, one-third of Fortune 500 companies and the top 30 media and entertainment companies across the globe, to name a few.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Apple wants to release a new version of their IOS, they send it to Akamai,\u201d explains John Sherwood, president of HFXIX. \u201cWhen customers download that new version of the IOS, they don’t do it from Apple, they do it from one of Akamai’s nodes.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a local business, hundreds of employees could be attempting that update at the same time. For those peering at HFXIX, having a direct, local connection to Akamai means they get that content faster and at a significantly reduced cost.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy getting the cache close to the end user, you cut down on traffic that has to travel across the Internet,\u201d explains Sherwood. \u201cThis results in better performance, better security and lower costs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Halifax can thank New Brunswick innovator, F6 Networks, Atlantic Canada’s largest independent fibre telecommunications company, for helping to get Akamai on board at HFXIX. F6 Networks provided the bandwidth to Akamai and signed onto HFXIX, itself, in December \u2013 another boon for those looking to maximize their direct local connections in the Maritimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Halifax Internet Exchange can directly benefit local service providers, school boards, hospitals, major IT companies, governments and financial institutions,\u201d explains Sherwood. \u201cThere’s a modest capital cost to get connected to the IXP, but once you’re online there is no cap to the bandwidth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Security is a subject that’s top of mind for many people in the Internet world, says Sherwood, with institutions getting increasingly nervous about personal and sensitive data crossing over international borders unnecessarily.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is actually fairly strict privacy legislation in Nova Scotia and British Columbia that doesn’t allow personal information to leave the country,\u201d he says. Sherwood notes that despite this legislation, however, the bulk of Canadian data \u2013 including personal health and financial information — is forced to travel through the United States, as long as Canadian companies and governments continue to rely on foreign infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy peering at the local exchange point, local traffic stays local,\u201d says Sherwood.<\/p>\n
That’s precisely what Canada’s rapidly-expanding network of Internet Exchange Points \u2013 including HFXIX — are trying to provide to Canadians. With support from CIRA, many IXPs, still in their infancy, are moving swiftly to get Internet mammoths like Akamai and Google on-board to peer locally. Canadian businesses and institutions that are connected to their local IXP will be able to reduce their costs, reduce latency and offer superior performance to their clients.<\/p>\n
As Canadians are downloading ever-more content, health delivery systems move online, and data security hits mainstream headlines almost daily, it makes sense now more than ever to peer locally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe traffic flows so much faster through an exchange than it does through transit,\u201d says Sherwood. \u201cThis may not be so important with email, but with other stuff it can be. Video conference, voice calls, any video content is impacted by low latency.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor banks, latency in electronic trading is a big deal \u2013 even a few thousandths of a second can affect trade and cost them a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of its work to build a better online Canada, CIRA has supported Internet Exchanges across the country. For more on the CIRA’s work in this area, visit www.cira.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dedicated group of volunteers are working to ensure that Halifax is ready to seize\u00a0the global digital economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2941,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"slim_seo":{"title":"Halifax IXP expands peering partners \u2013 Akamai added to roster - CIRA","description":"A dedicated group of volunteers are working to ensure that Halifax is ready to seize\u00a0the global digital economy. A dedicated group of volunteers are working to"},"footnotes":""},"topic":[28],"class_list":["post-42360","cira_news","type-cira_news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cira_news_type-cira-news-type-blog","cira_topic-cira-topic-cybersecurity","cira_author-ryan-hill"],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cira.ca\/en\/wp-json\/cira\/v1\/news\/42360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cira.ca\/en\/wp-json\/cira\/v1\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cira.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cira_news"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cira.ca\/en\/wp-json\/cira\/v1\/news\/42360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cira.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cira.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cira_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cira.ca\/en\/wp-json\/cira\/v1\/topic?post=42360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}