New Internet node: EWE and DE-CIX launch Northwest IX
For five years, DE-CIX has been working with partners to establish regional Internet nodes. One was put into operation in Oldenburg on Thursday.
EWE TEL Managing Director Norbert Westfal (from left), DE-CIX CTO Dr. Thomas King and EWE TEL Managing Director Jens Knobloch put the Northwest IX into operation on Thursday.
(Image: mki / heise online)
It's old wisdom for entrepreneurs: good networking is the be-all and end-all. And because cloud applications are being used more and more in the business environment, the desire for better networking is increasingly extending into the digital world. In Oldenburg, a new Internet node was put into operation on Thursday by EWE in cooperation with DE-CIX: the Northwest IX.
As a first step, the new interconnection point, which is located in EWE's data center in Oldenburg, is connected to the nearest DE-CIX node in Hamburg with 2x100GE, explained Dr. Thomas King, Chief Technical Officer at DE-CIX in Frankfurt am Main, when asked by heise online. This is a first step. Further connections to the central node in Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Düsseldorf are conceivable. "We can react quickly."
Significantly lower latency times
For the northwest and EWE as a telecommunications provider, the first expansion stage is of course already a major milestone, emphasized Norbert Westfal, Managing Director of EWE TEL. Companies can now establish direct and controllable network connections to cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google or SAP. Data packets will also travel much faster between companies in the northwest in future. Only a seventh of the time will be needed between Aurich and Bremerhaven, says Westfal, citing his own calculations - the long detour via Frankfurt that the data used to take will no longer be necessary.
From a nationwide perspective, the new node in the northwest is another piece of the puzzle on the way to covering the twelve largest metropolitan regions, explains DE-CIX CTO King. Nine already have their own nodes. The HAN-CIX in Hanover was only opened in April of this year. The Internet node there is located in the Grass-Merkur data center. The new node in the northwest region reaches 3.5 million households, added Westfal. Similarly, DE-CIX put the radius of HAN-CIX at 3.9 million in April.
Location advantage for settlements
The first talks with EWE in Oldenburg took place five years ago, King and Westfal recalled. Concrete plans have been underway for two years. At the inauguration ceremony with invited guests from the business world, terms such as Internet of Things, smart cities and telemedicine were also mentioned - not least because regional nodes that are networked with each other also contribute to the decentralization and reliability of the network. Lower Saxony's Economics Minister Olaf Lies (SPD), who had to cancel his visit at short notice, said that secure connections to cloud providers with low latency are increasingly also a locational advantage. Westfal agrees: the Northwest-IX is a "sustainable gain for economic settlements".
The red button, which was finally pressed by the two EWE TEL managing directors together with the DE-CIX board member, had an entirely different latency period. As Westfal pointed out, it was neither connected to a server by cable nor wirelessly. However, the first traffic was actually routed via the Northwest IX when the button was pressed - triggered by an employee sitting in the room with a notebook.
(mki)