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🌐 Internet PeeringDB TeleGeography 1,323 exchanges 5,861 facilities

The Biggest Internet Exchange In The World Is In São Paulo

1,323 registered internet exchanges and 5,861 colocation facilities, read from the registry operators keep about themselves. Counting buildings is the wrong measure: the United States holds 23.48% of the world’s facilities and gets 9.0 networks per building, against the Netherlands’ 21.5. And 162 of the exchanges have no networks on them, or exactly one.

1,860
Networks at IX.br São Paulo, the largest anywhere
162
Exchanges with no networks on them, or one
12
Networks at the median exchange; the mean is 42.9
2.39×
Dutch networks per building, against American
Data Sources
Coverage
1,323 exchanges · 5,861 facilities · 61,713 network presences across 185 countries and territories
Cross-check
395 exchanges publish their own member list; median disagreement with the operator's count is 3 network(s)
Licence
CC BY 4.0 (PeeringDB)
Key Takeaways

The largest internet exchange in the world is IX.br (PTT.br) São Paulo, with 1,860 networks on it — 1.83 times DE-CIX Frankfurt’s 1,018 and more than double AMS-IX’s 854. 3 of the ten largest are Indonesian.

  • Counting buildings is not counting interconnection. The United States holds 1,376 facilities, 23.48% of the world’s, and 20.04% of the network presences inside them — 9.0 networks per building against the Netherlands’ 21.5 and Indonesia’s 20.2.
  • 93 of the 1,323 exchanges have no networks on them at all and 69 have exactly one: 12.24% between them. An exchange with one member is a room with a switch in it.
  • The tail is most of the list. 575 exchanges — 43.5% — have fewer than ten networks, the median has 12 and the mean has 42.9. The smaller half of all exchanges hold 5.3% of registered presences between them.
  • The top of the list is short. The twenty largest exchanges carry 22.64% of every registered presence, and the ten largest carry 15.04%.
  • The empty count is checked against a second source. 395 exchanges publish their own machine-readable member list; the median disagreement with the operator’s own figure is 3 networks, and 4 exchanges recorded as empty do publish members — those are registry gaps and are excluded from the count above.

A Building Is Not An Interconnection

The number that gets quoted is how many data centres a country has. The number that decides whether traffic stays local is how many networks are inside them. Across 5,861 facilities there are 61,713 network presences, and they are not distributed the way the buildings are.

Facilities against the network presences inside them, for the countries with at least forty

United States
9.0 per building

1,376 facilities, 23.48% of the world’s, holding 20.04% of its network presences.

Netherlands
21.5 per building

2.39 times the American figure. A Dutch facility is a different kind of place, not a bigger one.

Indonesia
20.2 per building

203 facilities holding 4,095 presences — a seventh of America’s buildings and a third of its networks.

The Exchanges Nobody Joined

An internet exchange is a place networks agree to meet. Building one is a project with a ribbon; filling it is not. Of the 1,323 registered here, 93 have no networks on them and 69 have exactly one.

Every exchange by how many networks are on it

No networks at all
93

7.03% of every registered exchange. Not a low number of members — none.

Exactly one
69

Together with the empty ones that is 162 exchanges, 12.24% of the list. One network peering with itself is not an exchange.

Countries with nothing working
6

Countries whose every registered exchange is empty or has a single member. A further 14 have facilities and no exchange at all.

The Median Exchange Has 12 Networks

The mean is 42.9. When a mean is three and a half times its median, the average is describing a handful of places and nothing else on the list.

Cumulative share of network presences, exchanges ordered largest first

Under ten networks
575

43.5% of all exchanges. Small enough that what peering saves is unlikely to pay for the switch.

The smaller half
5.3%

Share of every registered network presence held by the smaller half of all exchanges, between them.

The twenty largest
22.64%

Share held by twenty exchanges. The ten largest hold 15.04%.

Not Frankfurt, Not London, Not Amsterdam

The standard account of internet geography names four European cities. The registry does not agree: the largest exchange in the world is in Brazil, and 3 of the ten largest are in Indonesia.

The twelve largest exchanges in the world

IX.br (PTT.br) São Paulo
1,860

Networks present, in São Paulo/SP. That is 1.83 times DE-CIX Frankfurt.

DE-CIX Frankfurt
1,018

The largest in Europe, against AMS-IX’s 854 and LINX LON1’s 837.

Indonesian exchanges in the top ten
3

Jakarta appears three times in the ten largest exchanges on earth, which is not where the usual story puts it.

The Philippines, For Scale

An archipelago of a hundred and twenty million people, and the country this site is mostly about. It has 15 registered exchanges and 423 network presences across them.

Network presences at exchanges, for the twenty countries with the most

Exchanges
15

Holding 423 network presences between them — fewer than a quarter of what sits on IX.br São Paulo alone.

Largest exchange
125

Networks on the biggest one. The world’s largest has 1,860.

Networks per facility
15.8

Across 24 facilities — higher than the United States’ 9.0, which is a reminder that this ratio measures concentration rather than capacity.

How An Empty Exchange Is Told From A Missing Record

The claim that an exchange has no networks on it is the strongest one on this page, so it is the one with a second source behind it.

Two counts of the same thing

PeeringDB records the number of networks an exchange operator says are present, and separately imports a count from the exchange's own published member list. 395 exchanges publish one. Where both exist the median disagreement is 3 network, so the two track each other closely enough to be used together.

A gap is not an absence

4 exchanges are recorded as having no networks by their operator while publishing a member list that shows members. Those are counted as registry gaps and excluded from the empty figure, which is why the number here is 93 rather than 97.

The registry is self-reported

PeeringDB is maintained by network operators about themselves. A country with no rows may have no exchange, or may have nobody filling in the form, and nothing in this data separates those two. Every count here is of what is registered.

What These Numbers Are Not

Four limits, each of which would change a conclusion above if ignored.

Networks present, not traffic

A count of networks at an exchange says nothing about how much passes over it. Two networks moving a terabit are one row; two hundred moving nothing are two hundred. No traffic figure is claimed anywhere on this page because the free sources do not carry one consistently.

Networks per building measures concentration

It is a ratio of two registered counts, and a high value means the networks are gathered in few buildings rather than that the buildings are good. The Philippines scores 15.8 and the United States 9.0, which is a fact about how many facilities each has rather than about either country's capacity.

Landing points are counted, not located

The submarine map contributes 728 cables and 1,925 landing points as a scale marker. Its landing-point records carry no country code and the routes it draws are schematic rather than surveyed, so no per-country split and no distance is computed from them.

A snapshot, not a series

PeeringDB records current state, not history, so nothing here shows change over time. An exchange that emptied last year and one that opened last week look identical.

Key Findings & Summary

  • The largest internet exchange in the world is IX.br (PTT.br) São Paulo with 1,860 networks — 1.83 times DE-CIX Frankfurt, and 3 of the ten largest are Indonesian.
  • The United States holds 23.48% of the world’s facilities and 20.04% of the networks in them: 9.0 per building against the Netherlands’ 21.5.
  • 93 exchanges have no networks on them and 69 have one: 12.24% of the registered total.
  • 575 exchanges have fewer than ten networks. The median has 12 and the mean has 42.9.
  • The twenty largest exchanges hold 22.64% of all registered presences; the smaller half of the list holds 5.3%.
  • The empty figure is checked against each exchange’s own published member list, and 4 apparent empties turned out to be registry gaps rather than empty exchanges.

Sources & Citations

Every figure on this page traces to one of these, through a CSV in data/global-interconnect/. Each is checked against its source query on every build.

PeeringDBPrimary

Every registered internet exchange point and colocation facility worldwide, with city, country, continent, and the number of networks present at each — CC BY 4.0, no key. A registry operators maintain about themselves, so absence is not proof of absence: a country with no rows may have no exchange, or may simply have nobody filling in the form. Rate-limited for anonymous clients, so every response is cached on disk.

A second count of the networks at each exchange, imported from the exchange's own published IX-F member list rather than typed in by its operator — Carried on the same records as ixf_net_count. Used as the cross-check: an exchange the operator records as empty whose own member list shows members is a registry gap, not an empty exchange, and is excluded from the empty tally.

Submarine cables and their landing points, as GeoJSON — Publicly served JSON, no key. Used for landing-point counts only; the cable routes on that map are schematic rather than surveyed positions and no distance is computed from them here.

Population (SP.POP.TOTL), income group and region for each country — No key. Used to describe countries, never to compute an interconnection figure.