DE-CIX

DE-CIX Management GmbH

Full name	DE-CIX Management GmbH
Founded	1995
Location	Cologne,  Germany
Website	www.de-cix.net
Members	3000+[1]
Ports	110[2]
Peak	17.09 Tbit/s[3]
Daily (avg.)	11.98 Tbit/s[3]

Deutsche Commercial Internet Exchange (DE-CIX), [ˈdeːˌkiks] is an Internet Exchange operator headquartered in Frankfurt am Main. The company offers peering, cloud connectivity, and interconnection services at 60 locations in Europe, Africa, North and South America, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia. In addition to managing its own IXs, DE-CIX also offers technical operations for third-party exchanges, such as UAE-IX in the United Arab Emirates. DE-CIX is accessible from data centers in over 600 cities worldwide and connects thousands of network operators (carriers), Internet service providers (ISPs), content providers, and corporate networks from more than 100 countries. In terms of data throughput, DE-CIX Frankfurt is one of the largest Internet exchanges in the world.^[4] All national and international DE-CIX activities and companies are consolidated under the umbrella of DE-CIX Group AG.^[5] DE-CIX employs nearly 250 people from around 35 countries worldwide.

DE-CIX operates Internet exchanges worldwide and offers its customers various interconnection services. Its core business is the provision of comprehensive peering options. Peering allows DE-CIX customers to use the company's data center and carrier-neutral infrastructure to set up comprehensive data exchange and traffic between their networks and the networks of other peering partners (also known as "peers") connected to DE-CIX for a monthly fee. Peering is an alternative to IP transit, where network operators route their data traffic through the network of a larger provider for a fee and on an individual basis depending on the destination. In addition to Internet exchanges specializing in peering, DE-CIX has also been operating Cloud Exchanges at many of its global locations since 2013, enabling DE-CIX customers to connect to over 50 cloud service providers.

The former post office on Mainzer Landstraße DE-CIX was founded in the fall of 1995 by Harald A. Summa and Arnold Nipper, among others, and was originally a project to interconnect the three Internet service providers (ISPs) MAZ Hamburg, EUnet Dortmund, and XLink Karlsruhe. The first location in Frankfurt was in a former telegram post office and had a connection speed of 2 Mbit/s. The post office was chosen as the location because ITENOS, now part of Deutsche Telekom, operated a data center there that was already connected to a European voice network operated by EuroDATA GmbH with 32 Mbit/s fiber optic. Operations were taken over by eco Association of the Internet Industry. In 1997, DE-CIX moved to a new data center operated by Interxion, now Digital Realty, on Hanauer Landstraße in Frankfurt am Main. In 2001, DE-CIX's commercial activities were transferred to DE-CIX Management GmbH, based in Cologne, a wholly owned subsidiary of the eco Association. In the same year, DE-CIX 2 went into operation in Frankfurt to solve the space problems in the old data center and increase reliability through redundancy. The new and old locations were connected by fiber optic cables. Growing Internet traffic and increasing demand for higher reliability led to a third location, which went into operation in January 2004 and was installed at the Telecity Group in Gutleutstraße in Frankfurt am Main. By 2014, DE-CIX's technical infrastructure in Frankfurt was already spread across 18 data centers operated by eight providers, primarily Equinix and Interxion. The largest relocation in DE-CIX's history took place in 2018. Around 15 kilometers of fiber optic cable were laid and the connections of 450 customers were migrated during ongoing operations. The additional location is on the Kleyerstrasse campus in Frankfurt-Gallus.^[6] According to its own information, DE-CIX Frankfurt now handles a large proportion of German peering traffic and is one of the largest Internet exchanges in the world in terms of the number of connected networks (2nd place), peak traffic (2nd place), and average data throughput (2nd place).^[7]

The DE-CIX Frankfurt Internet exchange point is redundantly housed in over 50 data centers, including those of Digital Realty and Equinix in Frankfurt am Main.^[8] In addition, DE-CIX currently operates its own exchange points in Germany in Hamburg (since 2002), Munich (since 2008), Düsseldorf (since 2015), and Leipzig (since 2022)^[9] and other Internet exchanges together with partners in the Ruhr area (Ruhr-CIX, since 2021). DE-CIX also engages in partnerships with other IX operators in order to extend its geographical coverage to those locations, for example in Berlin (Partner IX operated by BCIX), The United Arab Emirates Internet Exchange (UAE-IX) in Dubai, which went live in 2012 in cooperation with telecommunications company and data center operator du/Datamena, was the first Internet exchange operated by DE-CIX for partners and also the first Internet exchange operated by DE-CIX outside Germany. In fall 2013, DE-CIX expanded to North America and opened a new location in New York, which went live in 2014. The following year, the opening of DE-CIX Istanbul, DE-CIX Marseille, and DE-CIX Palermo was announced. With locations in Marseille and Palermo, as well as the opening of another location in Madrid in 2016, DE-CIX established several new Internet exchanges in Southern Europe. In the same year, a second DE-CIX location was opened in Dallas, North America. Since October 2018, the company has also been represented in Moscow (Partner IX operated by MSK-IX).^[10] St. Petersburg (Partner IX powered by MSK-IX) followed in early 2020. At the end of 2018, DE-CIX Lisbon became another Internet exchange point in Southern Europe.^[11] After DE-CIX had already opened an Internet exchange in Mumbai (Mumbai-IX) in 2017, the company announced the expansion of its presence in India in 2019. The joint venture DE-CIX Interwire Internet Services Ltd. launched three new locations in Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai under the DE-CIX brand.^[12] Later in the year, the announcement of locations in Johor Bahru and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia followed – the first DE-CIX locations in the Southeast Asia region. The presence there was expanded in January 2020 to include the Singapore location. Also in 2020, the SEECIX internet exchange point operated by DE-CIX in Athens was announced, followed by DE-CIX Barcelona. At the end of the year, DE-CIX also expanded its presence in North America with two locations in Richmond and Chicago. In February 2021, it was announced that DE-CIX would operate an Internet exchange for a local telecom provider in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei (Borneo-IX powered by DE-CIX), in cooperation with the state-owned company Unified National Networks.^[13] In the second half of 2021, the westernmost DE-CIX location was opened in Phoenix, Arizona, and the company announced its expansion into Northern Europe. Five new locations were established: Copenhagen and Esbjerg in Denmark, Oslo and Kristiansand in Norway, and Helsinki in Finland. In March 2022, a partnership was agreed with IRAQ-IXP, under which DE-CIX took over the operation of an Internet exchange in Baghdad.^[14] In the same year, DE-CIX entered into a cooperation agreement with the Aqaba Digital Hub project in Jordan to set up the AqabaIX Internet exchange.^[15] DE-CIX is now also represented in Africa through partnerships: Beginning at the end of 2022, the company set up the Africa Cloud Interconnection Exchange (AF-CIX powered by DE-CIX) in a data center operated by Rack Centre in Lagos (Nigeria) and the Africa Congo Internet Exchange ACIX interconnection platform with the Internet service and hosting provider UNITED S.A. in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo). At the beginning of 2025, DE-CIX, in cooperation with the Qatari telecommunications company Ooredoo, took an internet exchange into operation in Doha, the Doha-IX. In March 2025, DE-CIX also opened its first locations in South America: DE-CIX São Paulo and DE-CIX Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Other DE-CIX locations worldwide include Amsterdam, Bengaluru, Bucharest (Partner IX operated by InterLAN-IX), Fujairah, Houston, Hyderabad, Karachi, Manila (Partner IX operated by GetaFIX), Mexico City, Moscow (Partner IX operated by MSK-IX), Osaka, Penang, Prague (Partner IX operated by NIX.CZ), Querétaro, Saint Petersburg (Partner IX operated by MSK-IX), Seattle, Sofia (Partner IX operated by BIX.BG), Tokyo, and Warsaw (Partner IX operated by Thinx IX). DE-CIX now offers its peering, cloud connectivity, and interconnection services at a total of 60 locations in Europe, Africa, North and South America, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia.

Since 2013, DE-CIX has been relying on its own Ethernet-based platform, DE-CIX Apollon, for the technical operation of its Internet exchanges and interconnection services, particularly in the peering segment.^[16] The main technical component of DE-CIX Apollon for the IP network is Nokia routers from the 7750 SR-s and SR series, which DE-CIX uses worldwide.^[17] SR1-FP4 routers are installed at smaller locations (e.g., Lisbon), and SR-14s with FP5 line cards are used at larger locations (e.g., in the data centers of Digital Realty and Equinix in Frankfurt). DE-CIX's optical infrastructure consists of hardware from Smart optics,^[18] optics from Flexoptix^[19] and Nokia, as well as ROADM technology from Nokia (only in New York). The data centers in which DE-CIX has set up the Apollon infrastructure are connected to each other within a large area (metropolitan region or location) via fiber optic cables. DE-CIX uses path- and exchange-redundant fiber optic connections that are as short as possible to minimize latency (round trip delay). DE-CIX also operates two redundant route servers at each of its Internet exchanges, enabling peering partners to exchange data quickly and easily. To this end, DE-CIX primarily uses the open-source products BIRD and, in the future, OpenBGPD. DE-CIX relies on the open-source tool Alice-LG as its looking glass.^[20] DE-CIX customers can choose between different capacities when connecting to an Internet exchange. DE-CIX offers various port sizes for this purpose. Smaller Internet exchanges operated by DE-CIX usually only offer 1, 10, or 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) ports, while some larger DE-CIX locations have also offered 400 GE ports since 2019. In 2022, DE-CIX also announced that it would expand its technical capacities to 800 GE connections worldwide, starting at its Frankfurt location. Most DE-CIX locations are connected to each other via a global network. For this purpose, redundant network capacities are leased via undersea and terrestrial cables with bandwidths ranging from 10 GE to several hundred. This enables customers worldwide to participate in DE-CIX's peering ecosystems or use cloud on-ramps without their own hardware. In addition, DE-CIX has largely automated the provisioning of its products. Customers can order and configure interconnection services online manually via a portal or via a programming interface. In 2018, DE-CIX became the world's first Internet exchange operator to put a patch robot into operation that can provision and upgrade customer ports. The robot automatically reconnects cables so that no technician needs to set up new connections on site. The DE-CIX robot was named Best Internet Exchange Innovation at the 2018 Global Carrier Awards. The following year, two more patch robots were put into service by DE-CIX. According to its own information, DE-CIX makes around two-thirds of its available capacity available to its customers during normal business operations, while the remaining capacity is used for redundancy and to cater for short-term fluctuations. In addition, customer networks at most DE-CIX locations are protected against DDoS attacks by Blackholing.

DE-CIX is a founding member of the Route Server Support Foundation (RSSF)[26] and of the IX API project launched jointly with AMS-IX, LINX, Digital Realty (formerly Interxion) and EpsilonTEL [27].The RSSF finances the further development of open source tools related to OpenBGPD with the intention of providing two independent software products as route servers at Internet exchanges. The goal of the RSSF is to increase the resilience of route server services. The IX-API project aims to provide a standardized and open programming interface for Internet and cloud exchanges. The programming interface is integrated, for example, in Peering Manager[28]), an open source tool supported by DE-CIX for automatically managing and configuring routers. In addition, DE-CIX is involved in the further development of the Internet infrastructure and participates in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in the development of Internet standards and Requests for Comments (RFCs). Internally, DE-CIX operates its own research and development department, which works on infrastructure issues, publishes technical articles, and participates in scientific conferences. DE-CIX employees are involved in organizations dedicated to the further development of the Internet. For example, Harald A. Summa is a member of the board of the RIPE Network Coordination Centre, an independent non-profit organization that supports the development of the Internet infrastructure in the regions it serves through technical coordination.

Data throughput at DE-CIX Frankfurt has risen steadily over the years. In September 2012, the 2 terabits per second mark was exceeded for the first time, followed by 4 terabits per second in April 2015^[21] and over 6 terabits per second in December 2017.^[22] On September 19, 2019, 7 terabits per second were exceeded for the first time^[23] before the data throughput rose to over 8 terabits per second for the first time on December 11, 2019.^[24] Due to the general restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, data traffic at DE-CIX grew by a further 10 percent from the beginning/middle of March 2020, with video communication increasing by as much as 50 percent and gaming by 25 percent. There were also increases in social media visits and VPN connections. On December 14, 2022, DE-CIX Frankfurt achieved a data throughput of 14.4 terabits per second and on November 20, 2024, a record high of 18.1 terabits per second. Globally, data traffic at DE-CIX locations has also increased steadily in recent years. Massive video and software downloads are considered to be the main drivers of new data throughput records (traffic peaks). These are typically based on operating system updates and new or updated computer game versions. Streaming live sporting events such as Champions League soccer matches or NFL games in high video quality also requires the processing of large amounts of data. Five of the Internet exchanges operated by DE-CIX worldwide already exchange more than 1 terabit per second of data (DE-CIX Frankfurt,^[25] DE-CIX New York,^[26] DE-CIX Madrid,^[27] DE-CIX Dallas^[28] and DE-CIX Mumbai as of March 2025).^[29] According to the company's annual report, the connected customer capacity of all global DE-CIX locations amounted to more than 170 terabits at the end of 2024.^[30] At the beginning of 2025, more than 4,000 Internet service providers and other organizations from more than 100 countries were connected to DE-CIX Internet exchanges, including virtually all major carriers, content and Internet service providers, and numerous corporate customers.

Far less traffic was measurable for the new Internet protocol IPv6. In March 2012, an average of only 0.8 gigabits/s of IPv6 traffic ran through the DE-CIX, which corresponded to 0.088 percent of IPv4 traffic. After World IPv6 Launch Day on June 6, 2012, 3.5 gigabits/s were already running through DE-CIX at peak times (mostly around 9:00 p.m.). In May 2013, an average of 8 Gbit/s ran through DE-CIX. More recent statistics on the IPv6 share are not available.

In the wake of the revelations in 2013–2015 about the work of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), DE-CIX came under increased scrutiny because it was suspected that the NSA was directly tapping data there. However, according to the operators of DE-CIX, this is "technically impossible." It is likely, however, that the NSA, with the help of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), is obliging American network providers connected to DE-CIX to carry out surveillance measures.^[52] Klaus Landefeld, advisor to DE-CIX Management GmbH, reported on March 26, 2015, to the NSA investigation committee on the practices of the BND at DE-CIX since 2009, as the BND was looking for new ways to monitor the Internet after the end of Operation Eikonal in 2008. Landefeld explained that the BND was not only interested in non-German lines, such as those to the Arab world, but also in domestic German lines, on which over 90 percent of traffic is protected by fundamental rights in the German Constitution. It was "absolutely impossible" to decide what was "German or not" on the Internet. Even the 20 percent rule, according to which intelligence services are allowed to divert one-fifth of the line capacity, is not actually practiced, according to Landefeld. Providers set up their lines so that they are usually only 30 or 40 percent utilized. With the 20 percent rule, 50 to 60 percent of the traffic passing through would be tapped, which is not in line with the law.^[53] The Federal Chancellery is also said to have intervened several times and prevented both the G 10 Commission and the Federal Network Agency from investigating the wiretapping.^[54][55]

The internet exchange operator DE-CIX filed a lawsuit against the BND's surveillance measures before the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, arguing that the measures were unlawful.^[56] In an expert opinion prepared for DE-CIX Management GmbH, Hans-Jürgen Papier, former president of the Federal Constitutional Court and professor emeritus of public law, concluded that the BND's mass surveillance of Internet exchanges was illegal. According to Papier, the BND cannot comply with the law either legally or in practice and "disregards and exceeds" the principles of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. DE-CIX Management GmbH then filed a lawsuit against the Federal Republic of Germany,^[57] because, among other things, the amendment to the BND- Gesetz (Federal Intelligence Service Act) had further exacerbated the problem.^[58] The lawsuit was also based on the aforementioned expert opinion and the findings of the NSA investigation committee and was directed against the BND's use of the law in the context of strategic telecommunications surveillance. At the request of the BND, the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) had ordered a restriction of telecommunications secrecy on the basis of Section 5 Article 10 of the G 10 Act. The BND forwarded excerpts of this order to DE-CIX Management GmbH in a letter dated August 26, 2016, named the packet-switched transmission routes to it as the obligated telecommunications provider, and requested further action. In its action, which is to be decided by the Federal Administrative Court in the first instance, DE-CIX Management GmbH asserts that data from a purely domestic network node is being collected and that purely domestic telecommunications traffic is also being evaluated, even though Section 5 G 10 only authorizes the monitoring of international, i.e., cross-border, telecommunications. In addition, the BND collects the data traffic of a specific port in its entirety without the quantitative restriction of 20 percent provided for by law. Finally, the legal authorization in Section 5 G 10 is unconstitutional; moreover, the discrimination against foreigners violates the prohibition of discrimination under EU law. On May 30, 2018, the case was heard before the Federal Administrative Court, which ruled in the first and final instance on the action brought by DE-CIX Management GmbH that the BMI can oblige it to cooperate in the implementation of strategic telecommunications surveillance measures by the BND. ^[59][60][61]However, DE-CIX Management GmbH does not accept the Federal Administrative Court's ruling on the legality of BND espionage. It considers the questions raised to be unresolved and legal protection to be at risk. "We are very confident in our decision to go to Karlsruhe," Klaus Landefeld, member of the supervisory board of the management company, told heise online. He said that the numerous legal questions left unresolved by the Federal Administrative Court must be referred to the Federal Constitutional Court. According to DE-CIX management, the ruling raises questions about effective legal protection. Without the necessary detailed knowledge, citizens would not be able to prove that they themselves are affected by BND surveillance in Frankfurt. The companies that are obliged to comply with the ruling, in turn, are not allowed to assert the rights of citizens.^[62] On May 19, 2020, the Federal Constitutional Court announced its ruling on the case of Strategic Foreign-Foreign Telecommunications Surveillance by the BND and decided that the surveillance of telecommunications of foreigners abroad by the Federal Intelligence Service is bound by the fundamental rights of the Basic Law (GG) and, according to the current structure of the enabling provisions, violates the fundamental right to telecommunications secrecy (Art. 10 (1) GG) and freedom of the press (Art. 5 (1) sentence 2 GG). This applies to the collection and processing of data as well as the transfer of the data obtained in this way to other agencies and cooperation with other foreign intelligence services.^[63]

• List of Internet exchange points
• List of Internet exchange points by size

• Official website
• netzpolitik.org, Andre Meister: How the German Foreign Intelligence Agency BND tapped the Internet Exchange Point DE-CIX in Frankfurt, since 2009, 2015-03-31