More international companies have joined the Malaysia Internet Exchange (MyIX) with its membership base now comprising some 117 organisations.
Newer members include Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd of China, Aofei Data International Co. Ltd of Hong Kong, together with Hurricane Electric and Subspace Communications LLC of the United States.
In addition, local companies – namely MYNIC Berhad, Excel Commerce Solutions Sdn Bhd, NKH Solution Sdn Bhd, ICORE Technology Sdn Bhd, and AVM Cloud Sdn Bhd – have also joined MyIX recently.
This growth in membership numbers follows on the heels of MyIX expanding its membership and partnership base to also include enterprises in line with the continued evolution of the internet landscape.
Having been established in 2006 as an initiative under the Malaysian Communications Multimedia Commission (MCMC), membership was previously restricted to internet service providers (ISPs) before being broadened to also include content distribution networks (CDNs) over the years.
Its chairman Chiew Kok Hin (pic) explained that, in line with MyIX’s prime objective of keeping “local traffic local”, the association had opened the exchange for enterprises to directly peer (exchange traffic) with each other.
“Our Multi-Lateral Peering Arrangements (MLPA) support the open policy of interconnection with all MyIX members so as to improve the efficiency of routing and general connectivity of the internet,” said Chiew.
This is achieved by automating peering for open networks by providing route servers for participants to exchange routing information with multiple peers.
“As the country’s only non-profit national internet exchange body operated by industry, MyIX is committed to becoming more inclusive in addition to promoting greater development and depth,” said Chiew.
An internet exchange is essentially the physical infrastructure through which ISPs and CDNs exchange internet traffic among their networks for greater routing efficiencies, thereby reducing costs.
“Although we have significantly improved the presence of local traffic in MyIX, there is still substantial local traffic from the enterprise segment that goes via international path before re-routed back to Malaysia,” explained Chiew.
“Hence, the reason of opening up our internet exchange to enterprises stem from our intention to keep traffic local while enhancing MyIX’s ‘network effect’,” he said, adding that the platform would then increase efficiencies with more users joining it.
MyIX defines enterprises as corporations which are customers of ISPs, such as government agencies, financial institutions, universities and also small, medium enterprises (SMEs).
“These organisations can then secure their own autonomous system numbers (ASN) and arrange to peer directly at MyIX’s various nodes,” said Chiew.
These nodes are essentially access switches located at various alternative sites; thereby enabling members and peering partners to connect to ISPs, other members and content hosted by MyIX. MyIX currently has a total of seven nodes located throughout Malaysia.
Last month (September 2020), MyIX registered peak internet traffic of 670Gps. This was even higher than the 588Gbps posted in April after the Movement Control Order (MCO) was introduced.
