Roberto di Lallo, Italian computer scientist at Roma Tre University, made a research on the importance of IXPs, Internet eXchange Points and their effects on the latency of networks. IXPs are infrastructures used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to exchange traffic between their Autonomous Systems (ASes). An IXP allows ISPs to interconnect their ASes directly, i.e. to establish peerings between them, rather than through third-party networks (upstreams). IXPs play a crucial role in the development of the Internet, encouraging ISPs to create a dense network of interconnections at low cost. Some of them have a throughput of many Tbit/sec and are some of the most important building blocks of today’s Internet.

Internet exchange points (IXPs) are infrastructures allowing the ISPs to exchange the traffic between their networks without passing by a third-party network. The historic and technical importance of the IXPs, in terms of network densification, performance and cost reduction, was recently questioned by certain number of major ISPs having decided to leave (de-peering) the IXPs under the pretext of better IP traffic management and improvement in the QoS.

A study conducted by Roberto di Lallo aims to prove that the benefits induced by the IXPs are real in terms of performance and network security. This consisted in using about 150 RIPE probes in Italy and comparing trafic performance passing through two main Italian IXPs, MIX and NaMex, or through third-party network besides IXPs, towards 50 sites considered to be critical (bank, insurance, administration), and the 100 most visited sites in Italy. It was made possible thanks to the collaboration of small local ISPs which left the control of their BGP announcements to Di Lallo's team.

Orignal article in English