Brazil internet exchange service hires Nokia for network upgrade

Brazilian internet exchange service NIC.br selected Finish supplier Nokia to upgrade its network traffic infrastructure.

NIC.br is the largest internet exchange provider in Brazil and deemed one of the largest in the world. It is responsible, among other things, for registering and maintaining .br domain addresses, as well as for operating the Brazilian internet exchange (IX.br) service.

IX.br connects more than 3,500 companies and facilitates data traffic among internet service providers, content providers, hosting services, hyperscalers and other network operators. 

Under the contract, whose terms and values were not disclosed, NIC.br will replace part of its existing technology with the Nokia 7250 Interconnect Router (IXR) and 7750 Service Router (SR) which support EVPN services and 400/800G interfaces.

The company said that the upgrade will allow the NIC.br network to manage rising internet and traffic growth over the next five years.

“The network upgrade comes as the country faces massive internet data traffic growth that is expected to reach 218.5 million users and over 50 Terabits per second in the next five years,” Nokia said in a statement.

DATA TRAFFIC

According to NIC.br, IX.br is currently the world's largest set of internet exchange points (IXPs), operating 36 IXPs distributed in metropolitan areas across the country.

Installed in one or more datacenters, IXPs are neutral points where there is a physical interconnection of access networks (internet providers) and networks that offer services and content such as e-commerce, video streaming companies, search engines, social networks, banks, universities and government agencies.

This shared infrastructure allows companies to exchange data packets with each other, shortening the path that this data travels and avoiding having to send it outside the country. 

"In practice, the result is a faster, more efficient, more resilient internet with a lower cost for the end user," NIC.br said in a recent statement.

In recent years, IX.br has been breaking traffic exchange records in 36 locations.

In February, São Paulo's IXP, which NIC.br claims to be the global leader in traffic exchange volume and number of participants, alone reached 23Tbps.

In July, the IX.br service completed 20 years of operation.