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Internet Exchange Overview

Megaport owns and operates a series of Internet peering exchanges (IXs) in the majority of our global networks. IXs provide greater efficiency between networks and allow traffic to be exchanged directly, reducing latency and bandwidth usage on client internet connections.

There are two main types of IX peering arrangements:

• multilateral - Multilateral peering (MLPA) is the default when you connect to MegaIX. With multilateral peering, you use BGP to peer with both route servers (RS1 and RS2) for an IX market, you advertise your routes to the route servers, and all routes available from all other multilaterally peered connections are advertised to your peer from the route servers.
• bilateral - The second type of peering is bilateral peering (BLPA). This method is required for peers that do not participate in multilateral peering through the route servers and establishes a direct peering relationship with another entity on the exchange. You can participate in both multilateral and bilateral peering across the Megaport IX infrastructure.

If you are connecting to an AMS-IX location, see AMS-IX Connectivity.