Public Peering Remains Important in the Hyperscale Era

The distribution of CDN, cloud, and content provider capacity across Internet Exchanges (IXPs) provides a fascinating lens into the physical infrastructure of the Internet and public peering.

While hyperscalers and CDNs increasingly deploy private backbone infrastructure, public peering remains a critical mechanism for regional traffic distribution, cache efficiency, eyeball reach, and resilience.

This study aggregates the port capacity of ten of the most IXP-interconnected CDN, cloud, and content networks and ranks IXPs by total capacity. This ranking provides insights into the choices made by the networks, on an individual basis,, but also collectively as a group of CDN, cloud, and content providers with significant influence in the global interconnection ecosystem. The networks covered are Akamai, Meta, Amazon, Hurricane Electric, Cloudflare, Fastly, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, and ByteDance.

The limitations of this analysis are obvious: presence at exchanges could be incorrect, or port capacity could be out of date, for instance. However, most of the networks under analysis depend heavily on PeeringDB automation. This gives the report a relatively high level of confidence.

Public Peering Remains a Critical Component of the Internet's Architecture

The data highlights the enormous scale at which major CDNs, cloud providers, and content providers participate in public Internet exchange ecosystems globally. Sourced from PeeringDB, Table 1 ranks networks by the largest deployed port capacity at IXPs, illustrating how deeply integrated these operators are within the global Internet infrastructure. It also shows the number of exchanges they participate in (IX count) and the number of ports (Port count).

Table 1 — CDN/Cloud/Content networks ranked by the largest deployed port capacity at IXPs. Source: PeeringDB

ASN	Name	IX count	Port count	Port Capability (Tbps)
20940	Akamai	248	481	79.0
32934	Meta	202	429	69.4
16509	Amazon	263	335	51.2
6939	Hurricane	333	334	50.2
13335	Cloudflare	352	413	47.2
54113	Fastly	150	275	46.2
8075	Microsoft	210	374	39.0
15169	Google	179	322	29.9
2906	Netflix	108	205	29.0
396986	ByteDance	95	170	23.3

Akamai leads with 79 Tbps of deployed public peering capacity across 248 exchanges, reinforcing its long-standing strategy of distributing content as close as possible to end users. Meta closely follows with 69.4 Tbps, despite being present at fewer exchanges, indicating a strategy focused on very high-capacity deployments in key metros. Amazon ranks third with 51.2 Tbps, reflecting the growing importance of AWS and cloud-driven traffic flows at IXPs.

Cloudflare stands out as the most widely connected network in the dataset, participating in 352 exchanges worldwide, while Hurricane Electric (the only non-CDN network in the benchmark) maintains the second largest exchange footprint overall, with connectivity to 333 IXPs. Fastly, Microsoft, Google, and Netflix also have substantial global peering presence, highlighting the continued importance of public interconnection for large-scale content delivery, cloud services, and traffic localization. Lastly, ByteDance shows its limited footprint but high capacity deployed.

Overall, the data demonstrates that public peering remains a critical component of their Internet architecture, even for hyperscale operators with extensive private backbone infrastructure.

Global Observations

The data reveals several notable geographic and strategic patterns.

The top three exchanges globally are not surprising - although their order may be. IX.br Sao Paulo, DE-CIX Frankfurt, and Equinix Singapore are the exchanges with the largest deployed peering capacity. Note that Sao Paulo is also the exchange with the highest number of participants - 1861 according to PeeringDB – and peak/average traffic of 31Tbps/18Tbps according to their own statistics. DE-CIX Frankfurt is the largest European exchange by participant count (1017 networks), with peak and average traffic of 18Tbps and 12Tbps/12Tbps. Finally, Equinix Singapore, with a more modest 465 participants, has a peak/average traffic of 20 Tbps/14 Tbps.

What stands out most is the scale gap between the first and second-ranked exchanges: from 22.8 Tbps down to 11 Tbps, a drop of more than 50%. This suggests an exceptional level of traffic gravity and aggregation at the leading exchange, reinforcing the “winner-takes-most” dynamics often observed in Internet interconnection ecosystems.

One of the more unexpected findings is Brazil's dominance. Three Brazilian exchanges appear within the global top six, highlighting the maturity of Brazil’s domestic interconnection ecosystem and the success of IX.br in driving local traffic exchange at a massive scale. This reflects several structural advantages: a large domestic Internet population, strong local content consumption, and an active public peering culture.

Another notable trend is the limited presence of commercial colocation-led exchanges in the top 30 list, with Equinix taking five positions in the global top 20 for exchanges in Singapore, Chicago, Ashburn, Dallas, and Hong Kong. The only other two IX run by a colocation provider are Any2 West by Coresite and Digital Realty Atlanta. This highlights the increasing convergence between data center ecosystems and Internet exchange infrastructure. Large CDNs increasingly optimize deployment by colocating peering, compute, caching, and cloud interconnection within the same metro facilities.

Despite regional differences, several exchanges have emerged as universally important aggregation hubs. Every CDN and content provider analyzed is present in the following five exchanges:

• IX.br São Paulo
• DE-CIX Frankfurt
• Equinix Singapore
• BBIX Tokyo
• IX.br Rio de Janeiro

These exchanges have effectively become mandatory interconnection points for global content distribution.

From a geographic perspective, the top 30 exchanges are distributed as follows:

• Europe: 5 exchanges in Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam (x2), and Milan.
• South America: 4 exchanges in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza, and Santiago de Chile.
• Asia-Pacific: 11 exchanges in Singapore (x2), Tokyo (x3), Mumbai, Hong Kong, Osaka (x3), and Delhi.
• North America: 9 exchanges in Chicago, Ashburn, Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta (x2), Miami, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles/Silicon Valley.
• Africa: 1 exchange in Johannesburg.

Asia-Pacific’s strong representation reflects both population scale and the fragmentation of interconnection fabrics in key metro areas, notably Japan, with six exchanges, and Singapore, with two.

Lastly, several operators demonstrate extremely broad deployment footprints. Cloudflare, Meta, Akamai, Microsoft, and Fastly are present in all of the top 30 exchanges, although their deployed capacity varies significantly by market and strategic priorities.

Europe

Europe’s rankings challenge some traditional assumptions about the hierarchy of interconnections.

Historically, European Internet infrastructure discussions often focused on the “FLAP” markets: Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Paris. However, Paris does not appear among the leading four European exchanges in this dataset. Instead, NL-IX occupies the fourth position.

This is particularly interesting because NL-IX operates a highly distributed model spanning more than 8 countries, with more than 525 participants across 83 facilities in 12 cities throughout Europe. Its ranking suggests that distributed exchange architectures may increasingly complement—or partially substitute—the traditional single-metro exchange model.

The final European exchange to appear in the rankings is MIX-IT Milan, confirming Milan’s consolidation as a Southern European interconnection hub. One of the peculiarities of this exchange is that it also operates a datacenter facility, MIX DC Caldera.

South America

South America’s rankings are heavily dominated by Brazil. The first—and only— non-Brazilian South American exchange in the rankings is PIT Chile in Santiago.

Brazil’s strong representation demonstrates how a coordinated national exchange strategy can materially influence Internet localization and content distribution economics. Meta’s deployment strategy is particularly notable:

• IX.br Sao Paulo aggregates 6.4 Tbps of Meta IXP capacity,
• IX.br Fortaleza follows with 3.2 Tbps,
• IX.br Rio de Janeiro reaches 2 Tbps.

These large numbers show that Meta is using public peering as its main delivery mechanism in Brazil, possibly revealing the logistical and import complexities of the country.

Fortaleza’s role is especially important given its position as a major submarine cable landing hub connecting South America, North America, Europe, and, increasingly, Africa.

Asia-Pacific

Asia-Pacific contains the highest number of exchanges within the top 30 globally.

The leading exchanges are Equinix Singapore and BBIX Tokyo, followed by Equinix Hong Kong, JPNAP Tokyo, and BBIX Osaka. This indicates the continued dominance of Singapore, Tokyo, and Hong Kong as regional interconnection capitals.

Interestingly, Japan supports multiple peering fabrics within the same metro area, reflecting both the scale and competitive diversity of the Japanese Internet ecosystem with three distinctive IXP families: JPNAP, BBIX, and JPIX.

India also emerges as an increasingly important market of 1.4+ billion users. Extreme-IX Mumbai and Extreme-IX Delhi appear to be the most popular interconnection platforms for CDN deployment in India. This aligns with India’s rapid growth in Internet usage, video consumption, mobile broadband adoption, and hyperscale infrastructure investment.

Australian exchanges are absent, probably due to its population of 30 million (equivalent to Mumbai, for instance). Other reasons could be the choice of alternative architectures, such as deep caches, due to Australia's concentrated ISP market centered on Telstra, Vocus, Optus, and TPG.

North America

North America presents an interesting contrast.

The highest-ranked North American exchange is Equinix Chicago, yet it ranks only 9th globally. This likely reflects the historical tendency in North America toward private interconnection and bilateral peering rather than toward concentration around large public exchanges.

Nevertheless, North America remains strongly represented, with six exchanges in the global top 20.

An especially notable finding is the presence of three community-driven exchanges among the leading North American platforms: SIX Seattle, CIX Atlanta, and FL-IX Miami. Their rankings demonstrate that carrier-neutral and community-oriented interconnection models continue to play an important role even within highly commercialized Internet markets.

Canada is also absent from the global top 30 due to its limited Internet user population. The first Canadian exchange, TorIX, appears as the 31st, and most likely because of US networks peering there. This reflects a stronger dependence on US interconnection ecosystems, as well as a smaller domestic market scale or greater use of private interconnection models.

Africa

Africa remains comparatively underrepresented. NAPAfrica Johannesburg is the only African exchange in the top 30, ranking 12th globally. While this demonstrates Johannesburg’s role as the continent’s primary digital hub, it also illustrates the broader gap in interconnection density between Africa and other regions. The second African hub is IXPN Lagos in Nigeria, back in 60th place.

Interconnection is Continually Evolving

This study reinforces several broader conclusions about the evolution of the Internet to its current form.

First, public peering remains strategically important even in the hyperscale era. CDNs, Cloud, and Content providers continue to invest heavily in public exchange connectivity as part of their "edge" because IXPs provide efficient access to eyeball networks, lower-latency paths, and regional traffic localization.

Second, geography and demographics still matter. The largest exchanges are concentrated in metros that combine:

• Dense fiber ecosystems
• Hyperscale data centers
• Submarine cable connectivity
• and large populations of Internet users

Finally, the rankings demonstrate that interconnection to the public Internet is no longer dominated by North American and European exchanges. Brazil, Singapore, Tokyo, Mumbai, and Johannesburg also serve as regional hubs of the global interconnection fabric.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Gaurab Upadhaya for suggestions regarding the lack of Australian and Canadian exchanges, and to Randy Epstein for pointing out that Any2 exchanges are owned by Coresite.

Adapted from the original post which first appeared on RIPE Labs Blog.

Gaël Hernández is an independent consultant at Atlas Peering and a member of the PeeringDB Admin Committee.

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