Amsterdam Internet Exchange Meets Growing Demand for Capacity with Brocade Network

AMSTERDAM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Brocade BRCD has announced that one of the world’s biggest Internet Exchange Points (IXP), the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), selected Brocade to deliver a new MPLS/VPLS network topology to increase network stability and resilience for its portfolio of 350 clients. AMS-IX installed Brocade NetIron MLX series switches and routers to meet the growing demand for bandwidth that is resulting from exponentially rising traffic volume.

AMS-IX is one of the largest Internet hubs worldwide, where global service provider and large enterprise networks come together. In total, they exchange more than 850 Gigabits per second of Internet traffic. The AMS-IX platform provides high quality, non-blocking professional peering services for all types of IP traffic whether regular data, video or VoIP. AMS-IX additionally hosts the first mobile peering points worldwide, the Global GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX) and the Mobile Data Exchange (MDX), as well as solutions for broadcasting with the multicast peering service.

Due to the growth of Internet traffic and increased volume of users, AMS-IX must double the size of its network each year in order to keep pace with demand. Its former dual-star topology (one active, one passive) was starting to reach capacity limits, and even the largest Ethernet switches – 128 x 10 GbE ports – could not meet demand. AMS-IX took the decision to move to a distributed core architecture to expand capacity and improve stability.

“By changing our infrastructure, we expect to stay ahead of the exponential traffic growth requirements we have been facing over the past couple of years,” said Henk Steenman, Chief Technical Officer at AMS-IX. “We have experienced peak traffic in excess of 850 Gbps per second. Brocade was the only networking provider able to deliver us an infrastructure that could accommodate a combination of three key factors: performance, extremely high scalability and reliability. When one of these requirements does not function well, it has a negative impact on our business and on the end user. It is imperative that we offer our clients non-blocking connectivity at an affordable price-point and with a high degree of availability.”

AMS-IX implemented Brocade NetIron MLX routers to facilitate growth in this new architecture. The Brocade NetIron MLX design gives AMS-IX the opportunity to aggregate as many as 32-ports of 10 GbE to provide an aggregated link capacity of 320Gbps. Brocade has applied advanced load-sharing algorithms in order to fully utilize the increased capacity, establishing the industry's highest and most advanced link aggregation solution. These patent-pending load-sharing algorithms help ensure optimal utilization of all links in a link aggregate and reduce correlation between equal cost multipath and link aggregation.

“We have implemented the new infrastructure in three different phases to avoid any traffic disruption for the end-users,” stated Piet Giesbers, Regional Director Europe North (Benelux, Nordics and Baltics) at Brocade. “AMS-IX carried out the biggest part of the implementation process, but worked closely with Brocade engineers and the Brocade TAC organisation offered remote support. The involvement of both teams were crucial in the preparation, development and testing in the run up to the implementation, which was executed in only three months [during summer 2009].”

In cooperation with Brocade, AMS-IX has built two identical networks with one operational and the other acting as an identical back-up. To avoid traffic disruption in the event of failure, AMS-IX made use of photonic switches to automatically fail over from the primary network to the back-up network in milliseconds.

“We expect that the new load-balancing core architecture will provide us with sufficient headroom until September 2010,” added Steenman. “By then we expect to have the ability to increase the port density of our existing platforms, as well as evolve its features, which will allow us to increase the size of the 10GbE bundles between core and edge switches. We anticipate to expand the distributed load-balancing core beyond the four we now have, and we are confident that Brocade will allow us to keep ahead of our members’ traffic and port growth requirements.”

"Brocade is committed to fully powering and scaling Internet Exchange growth," concluded Giesbers. "Brocade's current capabilities and recent enhancements to its performance orientated switches and routers are at the forefront of flexible and scalable solutions that enable IXPs to meet stringent bandwidth, high service levels, scalability and efficiency requirements. Our networking solutions provide unprecedented link aggregation capacity, stability and flexibility to set a new industry standard for powerful and efficient scaling of networks.”

Video

Job Witteman, CEO at AMS-IX, on the relationship with Brocade: http://www.youtube.com/user/BrocadeVideo#p/u/0/-aECSsfd4Wk

About Amsterdam Internet Exchange

AMS-IX (ams-ix.net) is a neutral and independent not-for-profit Internet exchange providing services since the early 1990's. AMS-IX is one of the largest Internet hubs worldwide, where over 350 Internet related parties come together to exchange more than 850 Gigabits per second of Internet traffic amongst them. The AMS-IX platform provides high quality, non-blocking professional peering services for all types of IP traffic whether regular data, video or VoIP. AMS-IX additionally hosts the first mobile peering points worldwide, the Global GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX) and the Mobile Data Exchange (MDX), as well as solutions for broadcasting with the multicast peering service. For more information please visit www.ams-ix.net

About Brocade

Brocade^® BRCD develops extraordinary networking solutions that enable today’s complex, data-intensive businesses to optimize information connectivity and maximize the business value of their data. For more information, visit www.brocade.com.

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