History

During the summer of 2025, we upgraded the core infrastructure at all three Vienna Internet eXchange locations while operations continued. All core switches were replaced with more powerful devices, enabling VIX to offer 400 Gbps customer ports for the first time. In addition, the cross-connections between the locations were shifted to a new technology and subsequently operated with a bandwidth of multiple 400 Gbps.

To enhance physical security, a dedicated system room for the Vienna Internet eXchange was established at the VIX1 site (University of Vienna).  During a nightly maintenance window in January 2024, the platform components were moved to the new room, and the participants' connections were switched accordingly. The site was back in full operation after just a few hours. The two other VIX locations were not affected by the relocation.

On 1 November 2023, data traffic on the Vienna Internet eXchange reached a peak of 1.5 terabits per second (5-minute average) for the first time. This represents an increase of around 50 % over a period of 2.5 years.

Less than a year after the platform change, the new VIX infrastructure was able to demonstrate its improved expandability for the first time:
The core switches at the location VIX2 (Interxion) were replaced with more powerful models during ongoing operations at the end of March 2022. This doubled the number of available 100 Gbps ports for participant connections.
At the hitherto smallest but constantly growing location VIX3 (NTT), the bandwidth of the cross-connections to VIX1 and VIX2 was doubled in mid-May 2022. The intersite capacity among the three VIX locations is now uniform at 400 Gbps.

In May 2021, after nearly eight years of operation, the hardware infrastructure of the VIX was completely replaced. The previously used chassis-based devices with line cards gave way to fixed-configuration switches, each one rack unit (aka "pizza boxes"). With the new switches from the Arista 7280 series, the VIX's overall capacity increases significantly.

The new design also simplifies future upgrades: Components can now be added easily without adversely affecting existing participant ports. Furthermore, Infinera's new WDM components increase the capacity of the cross-connections between the three VIX locations from 160 Gbps to up to 9.6 Tbps.

The entire transition went smoothly during ongoing operations with only 2-10 minutes of downtime per participant port. We are also very pleased that our peering infrastructure's energy consumption fell to around one-third of its previous level with the new hardware.

The COVID-19 pandemic was also evident at VIX: On the one hand, the VIX team worked from home from mid-March through the end of the year (and beyond), which meant longer lead times for some on-site activities. On the other hand, the traffic volume at VIX increased significantly at the start of the first lockdown in March. Still, it returned to the usual level over time.

This was mainly because, initially, not only did Internet traffic suddenly increase, but the traffic distribution (who communicates with whom, as well as the temporal distribution throughout the day) also changed significantly. Somewhat later, various capacity adjustments and optimization measures by VIX participants apparently helped restore “normality.”

In the context of the national implementation of the EU-wide "Network Information Security" (NIS) Directive, VIX was defined as an "essential service" in July 2019. Among other things, this required complete documentation of all security-related processes at VIX. Beyond this, additional measures were taken to standardize and optimize existing processes. The adaptation of VIX's Information Security Management was based on the ISO 27001 standard to facilitate future certification.

To maintain sufficient reserves, even in exceptional network situations, the bandwidth of the cross-connection between VIX1 (University of Vienna) and VIX2 (Interxion) was increased to 2 x 160 Gbps at the end of March 2017.

On 13 December 2016, traffic on VIX exceeded 500 Gbps for the first time. The VIX team celebrated the historic event with a cake, freshly baked and decorated by team member Erwin Rennert in accordance with the occasion.

At the beginning of October 2015, the third VIX site in e-shelter's (from June 2020: NTT's) data center in the 10th district was put into operation. Since then, in addition to the University of Vienna in the city center and Interxion in northern Vienna, there has been another option to connect to VIX in southern Vienna. VIX3 is connected to VIX1 and VIX2 via path-redundant fiber optic links.

The existing RX platform by Foundry Networks (from 2008: Brocade) was replaced in summer 2013 by the successor series MLXe, which also supported 100 Gbps connections. A 32-slot chassis was installed at both VIX locations, and an additional 8-slot chassis at Interxion to terminate the slower connections (up to 1 Gbps). In the course of this, the WDM technology was also updated: instead of CWDM, DWDM was used, along with a doubling of the available channels from 8 to 16. This meant a possible bandwidth of 2 x 160 Gbps for the cross-connection between the two VIX sites. In practice, it was initially extended to 2 x 80 Gbps.

The room in the NIG ("Neues Institutsgebäude" of the University of Vienna) occupied by VIX in 1999 was bursting at the seams again. Therefore, in January 2011, all equipment was moved into a newly adapted "VIX Carrier Room" in the same building, which offered significantly more space and a completely new power supply and cooling infrastructure. A 24/7 access system enabled VIX1 housing customers, for the first time, to access their equipment in the NIG around the clock, even unaccompanied by VIX employees.

From spring 2010, VIX participants were able to use two central route servers, which greatly simplified the setting up of peerings. Assuming a correspondingly high participation rate on the route servers, it was now possible, in principle, to peer with all VIX participants using just two BGP sessions.

In February 2008, the VIX team moved from Vienna University's "Neues Institutsgebäude" (NIG) to a neighboring building (Ebendorferstrasse 10). The VIX equipment and postal address remained in the NIG.

10 years after the founding of the Vienna Internet eXchange, another hardware upgrade was necessary, as the devices in use could no longer keep pace with VIX's annual doubling of traffic volume. They were replaced by two Foundry Networks terabit switches with a maximum throughput of 1.6 terabits per second. In addition, the bandwidth of the cross-connection between the two VIX sites was increased to 2 x 10 Gbps. The migration was carried out smoothly, without interrupting the switching service, in cooperation with Interxion and Siemens at the end of March 2006. At the end of 2006, the volume of peering traffic at VIX was about 1 gigabyte per second, totaling about 100 terabytes per day.

In parallel with implementing IPv6-based services for the University of Vienna and within ACOnet, the VIX team began offering support for exchanging IPv6-encoded data packets among interested ISPs. To prevent interference with regular IPv4 traffic, IPv6-related connections were initially handled on a dedicated VLAN, which was later abandoned as IPv6 technology became more stable. Since the beginning of 2005, IPv4 and IPv6 have been equally available to VIX participants for their peerings.

In 2001, the number of VIX participants had grown to 70, including some well-known internationally active ISPs such as Deutsche Telekom and Cable & Wireless (USA). Due to limited space at the University of Vienna and increasing traffic volume, the Vienna Internet eXchange had to be expanded to a second location, and the switching hardware had to be renewed. Interxion, a company operating data centers across Europe, including in Vienna-Floridsdorf (21st district), was able to provide sufficient space. Moreover, Interxion was not competing with ISPs in the field of commercial carrier/telecom or ISP business - the neutrality of VIX was thus preserved. The decision to enter into a partnership agreement with Interxion proved to be the right one, as there has been excellent cooperation right from the start.

In 1999, the Vienna Internet eXchange was already occupying 5 full racks of equipment in the NIG ("Neues Institutsgebäude" of the University of Vienna) and interconnecting 33 ISPs. At that size, various bottlenecks became increasingly obvious. Thus, the service was relocated to a dedicated area in the NIG later that year. The new room was properly set up with air conditioning, UPS, and 21 racks. On this occasion, the previously used Cisco switch was also upgraded to support Fast Ethernet better.

The Vienna Internet eXchange (VIX) was launched in 1996 by the University of Vienna's Zentraler Informatikdienst. It comprised bilateral peering agreements between the first Austrian Internet Service Providers (ISPs): ACOnet, EUnet GmbH, IBM Global Network, VIAnet, and APA. This laid the foundation for connecting additional ISPs. The goal was to keep local Internet traffic as local as possible to avoid expensive long-distance routes, increase data throughput, and minimize delays.