"Quantum Internet can alter the way the Internet operates"

Sudhir Kunder, Country Director of DE-CIX India, an Internet Exchange Point that claims to be India's first legally-compliant exchange shares his insights on the developments in the space, which is the backbone of every technology leap that the digital world is taking. 

In an interaction with Pratima Harigunani, he connects the lines across many industry circuits, from the Internet during the pandemic to emergence of IXPs in a space dominated by ISPs, evolution of peering, and the arrival of loT and Edge. He also addresses debates like IPv6, OTT Internet payments, decentralised Internet and Net Neutrality.

How do IXPs, edge computing, co-location centres, and the Internet of Things (IoT) affect the Internet landscape?

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) increase Internet speed and reliability by enabling network operators to exchange traffic directly with one another, decreasing reliance on third-party transit providers. Instead of depending on centralised datacentres, edge computing pushes computation and data storage closer to the source of the data, resulting in quicker processing speeds and lower latency.

Colocation centres offer physical space for businesses to host their servers and other computer equipment, enabling them to connect securely and directly to different networks and service providers. With backups available at multiple colocated datacentres, resilience is increased and dependency on a single PoP is reduced. Technology has changed the Internet environment by making it more widespread, faster, and better connected.

What role do Peering and IXPs play vis a vis existing Internet Service Provider (ISP) infrastructure?

The current infrastructure of an ISP uses Full Duplex Internet bandwidth with no dedicated connections to the Content Delivery Networks, CDNs. Peering saves bandwidth, reduces cost, and makes the connection robust, resilient, reliable, redundant, and secure as there is no external interference. Also, since the data skips the public Internet traffic and travels directly to the peered CDN, the chances of a data breach are minimalised.