Inex.ie
Title
Internet Neutral Exchange Association |
Description
History of INEX
In May 1996, four companies from the fledgling Irish Internet industry came together to create an Internet exchange point to serve the Irish IP community in Dublin. INEX, the Internet Neutral Exchange, was formally incorporated in September 1996 as a company limited by guarantee, and was registered at the Companies Office in Dublin.
Using a 3Com Etherlink III 10Mb hub, INEX went live at Cara Computer's data centre in the Galileo Building on Fenian Street, Dublin on April 22, 1997 when HEAnet connected a 512K leased line to the hub. This roll-out finally provided its founder members, EUnet Ireland (now part of BT Ireland), HEAnet (remains a member), Indigo (now part of eircom) and Telecom Internet (also part of eircom) with huge performance increases and cost savings. The 3Com hub was soon replaced with a Cisco Catalyst 2908 switch, and this was superseded by a Cisco C2924 switch in 1999.
By today's standards, international Internet connectivity at the time was extremely expensive and the speed of access was cripplingly low. The fastest ISP at the time had less bandwidth than the average business DSL consumer has today, but paid dearly for it. While wholesale costs for IP connectivity can now be found for as low as €10 per megabit per month, in Ireland at the time, it was not unusual to pay tens of thousands of pounds per megabit per month. It was clear to all the members of the new organisation that their investment would pay for itself very quickly while providing their customers with a much better quality of service.
Languages
English
