Press releases/AMS-IX

Wikimedia Foundation improves performance and reduces costs by peering at AMS-IX

Direct interconnection with hundreds of networks in Amsterdam

Amsterdam/St. Petersburg, December 12, 2007 - The Wikimedia Foundation, the international non-profit organization behind Wikipedia, and the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) have joined forces for “the good of the Internet.” Both non-profits strive to enable Internet progress and generally improve the user experience.

As part of this joint program, AMS-IX will give Wikimedia a Gigabit Ethernet connection at no cost, which will enable Wikimedia to deliver up to 10,000 requests per second directly to hundreds of other networks, including many major internet service providers.

"This relationship is an important step in our long-term hosting strategy," said Mark Bergsma, Wikimedia networking coordinator. "As a charitable, educational non-profit, we want to find the most cost-effective ways to fulfill our mission of providing free knowledge to the world. As we grow, we're under increasing pressure to serve more people and more needs, and we have to continue to find innovative solutions to do that without increasing costs. The use of AMS-IX helps us control costs, and to become more autonomous, more flexible and less dependent on suppliers."

AMS-IX is the largest public Internet Exchange in the world. An Internet exchange interconnects a number of networks for the purpose of "peering," which allows network operators to directly exchange traffic without intermediaries. At AMS-IX most European and many international networks can be reached directly, making it a very network- and cost-efficient peering location. The quantity and diversity of the membership at AMS-IX allow its participants to increase autonomy and reduce overall costs.

”We believe that Wikimedia like ourselves is one of these organizations that has and will in the future continue to enable the progress of the Internet. WMF was one of the very first organizations to empower the now frequently used “wisdom of the crowds” with Wikipedia. We are proud that our members, the connected networks, support us in this belief and we can bring benefit to a worthy cause,” said Job Witteman, AMS-IX CEO.

As Wikipedia and its sister projects grow, the Foundation has a larger demand to meet the needs of more people. From 2006 to 2007, traffic has more than doubled for Wikipedia alone. Currently the site receives up to 50,000 requests per second during peak.

"The support and partnership of AMS-IX will be a huge step toward helping Wikimedia make the Internet a more valuable resource. We'd like to thank AMS-IX for making this happen; we are funded by donations, and the efforts of organizations like AMS-IX can make a huge difference in what we are able to do," said Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director.

For more information, please contact Sandra Ordonez at (503) 866-2697 or email her at sordonez@wikimedia.org.

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 * About AMS-IX

AMS-IX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange) is a neutral and independent not-for-profit Internet exchange providing services since the early 1990s. AMS-IX is one of the largest Internet hubs worldwide, where over 280 Internet related parties come together to exchange Internet traffic amongst them. The AMS-IX platform provides high quality, non-blocking professional peering services for all types of IP traffic whether regular data, video or VoIP. AMS-IX additionally hosts the first mobile peering points worldwide, the Global GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX) and the Mobile Data Exchange (MDX), as well as solutions for broadcasting with the multicast peering service. (www.ams-ix.net)
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