16 December 2020

Asteroid Mombasa IXP changes into second gear

Asteroid is upgrading the infrastructure in Mombasa to deliver ports to meet existing growing demand.

Since its operational launch in February 2020, Asteroid Mombasa IXP has enjoyed a steady growth with 15 networks signing up for the interconnection services and filling up the initial port capacity. As a result, Asteroid is upgrading the equipment, which will increase the number of ports connected and available to 46. This upgrade is scheduled for early Q1 2021.

The Asteroid Mombasa IXP currently interconnects a diverse peering community consisting of mostly Kenyan networks (47%), then international (33%) and regional networks (20%). By becoming the second crucial peering location in Kenya, Mombasa provides both resilient connectivity to the local networks, and additional Internet routes from abroad. Two additional submarine cables - PEACE and DARE1 - will land in Mombasa in 2021 and will further diversity and network density in this regional hub.

The Asteroid Mombasa Internet exchange point currently delivers a daily peak traffic of 3Gbps, with the all-time peak traffic of 7.83Gbps delivered in May earlier this year.

With this announcement, we welcome the testimonials of three of our IXP participants.

Inet:

With more than 50% of our traffic now routed over Asteroid IXP, we have been able to take our network to the next level. In addition to the obviously significant cost savings and improved stability, we have also noticed improved load times in our IP transit connections due to faster loading of certain CDNs and quicker DNS lookup times from Google DNS. This has allowed us to stay price competitive while delivering an even higher quality of service to our customers. We are happy to have Asteroid and all connected peers at the internet exchange as our partners.
Sumeet Rajpal, co-founder at iNet Africa (AS328753)

Emtel:

Connecting to Asteroid IXP in Mombasa was a no-brainer for Emtel. Mauritius is directly connected to Mombasa through the LION/LION2 cable and we believe the Asteroid IXP is ideally located to provide the best latency to East African networks. Asteroid IXP also allows us to increase our peering resilience in Mombasa with all CDNs currently present there. We hope to see more networks connecting at the Asteroid IXP in the near future!
Nandraj Kisto, Sr Associate Engineer at Emtel (AS30999)

PCH (Packet Clearing House)

We are very excited to be part of Asteroid IX in Mombasa and contribute to a faster and more resilient Internet in Kenyas second largest digital hub. Our anycast DNS node improves the resolution time of the DNS root zone and more than 300 TLDs, including the country-code TLDs of more than 30 African countries. Thanks for helping to build the peering community!
Gaƫl Hernandez, Sr Manager Interconnection at PCH (AS42/3856)

Asteroid warmly thanks all the connected networks for their trust and collaboration.

Are you considering connecting to Asteroid Mombasa IXP? Get in touch with our team at info@asteroidhq.com for further information and/or visit our Mombasa IXP page.

Asteroid Mombasa IXP changes into second gear

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16 December 2020

Asteroid Mombasa IXP changes into second gear

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