01 Sep 2025
We’ve updated the way we count active IXPs. The Pulse IXP Tracker is designed to show the role of Internet exchange points in a resilient Internet ecosystem, and to build up a picture of the growth and health of the IXP landscape over time. We’ve been rethinking how to we do that in Pulse, starting with improving how we define an active IXP, and, as a result, updating the global total of IXP
Improvements
Removed IXPs that have fewer than 3 members
The IXP tracker uses source data from PeeringDB for IXP and member counts. PeeringDB data is self-reported by IXP operators and members, so it can contain inaccuracies, including duplicate entries. We originally included IXPs that had at least one active member listed in the source data, but this meant that we were including IXPs that, in fact, were not active at all, leading to an overrepresentation of the real count. We’ve reviewed this and decided that for an IXP to be defined as “active” and show up in the Tracker, it needs at least 3 members listed in PeeringDB. When you look at the count per country, it might now be lower, but we believe this is a more accurate reflection of the IXP landscape.
Bug Fixes
Fixed how we count IXPs globally
On the IXP Tracker landing page, the global count was counting all IXPs, not just those that met our definition of an active one, which meant a large overcount, and even included some IXP listings with no members at all. We’ve fixed this and adjusted it to reflect our updated definition of an active IXP. The total count will be significantly lower, but it’s now more accurate.