AMS-IX Amsterdam: remote peering from Poland
Amsterdam, Netherlands
AMS-IX in Amsterdam is one of Europe's largest internet exchanges. How to peer there remotely, without colocation in the Netherlands.
Last updated:
- City
- Amsterdam
- Peering LAN ASN
- AS1200
- Access via AS202520
- Zdalny / Remote
- Route servers
- Tak / Yes
- Model
- Neutralny, stowarzyszenie / Neutral, association
AMS-IX is an internet exchange in Amsterdam and one of the oldest and largest in Europe. It operates as a neutral entity, historically as a members' association, which produced a very broad membership: carriers, content networks, cloud providers, universities and hosting companies from around the world peer there. Alongside Frankfurt and London, Amsterdam remains one of the three main hubs of the European internet.
Why operators peer there
Amsterdam has a different member profile than Frankfurt, so the two exchanges complement rather than duplicate each other. Content networks and service providers without a presence in Poland often keep a port there, and peering with them takes traffic off paid transit and shortens the path to the user. For a Polish operator it is also diversification: a second independent foreign exchange means trouble at one does not cut off all peering traffic.
How to get there
- Your own presence: colocation in Amsterdam, an AMS-IX port, a cross-connect and hardware to service on site. Full control and the full cost of running a foreign location.
- Remotely via AS202520: one connection in Poland and we carry the traffic to AMS-IX. No colocation in the Netherlands and no second set of devices.
- An AMS-IX port reseller: an intermediary reselling ports, usually with their own transport layer. A middle option whose cost is worth comparing against remote access.
What to expect
AMS-IX provides route servers, so a large share of sessions can be set up without individual arrangements with every member. Before starting it is worth tidying up IRR objects and ROAs, because serious members filter prefixes and an unsupported entry simply will not pass. Current member counts and technical parameters are in PeeringDB, where the exchange maintains its profile. Separately, do the volume arithmetic: peering makes sense when you actually have traffic to exchange, not because an exchange is famous.
AMS-IX and AS202520
We are not physically present in Amsterdam. We serve AMS-IX remotely: we take your traffic in Poland over a cross-connect, a VLAN at a Polish internet exchange or a GRE tunnel, and carry it to the exchange. We bill download from 50 PLN per Gbps at a 10:1 ratio, and one connection covers not only AMS-IX but the whole set of exchanges and content networks we reach.
Member counts and technical parameters change continuously. Check the current data at the source: PeeringDB
Frequently asked questions
AMS-IX or DE-CIX, if I can only pick one?
It depends on who you want to exchange traffic with. Both have large but not identical member bases, so it makes more sense to check in PeeringDB where the networks generating your traffic are present than to go by exchange size. With remote access over a single port the question usually loses its edge, because you do not have to choose.
How much capacity makes sense to start with?
Start from how much traffic you actually send today to networks present at the exchange, not from a round number. In practice, for a smaller operator a sensible start is capacity covering the evening peak with headroom, not the whole volume. Bandwidth scales later, so it is better to start carefully and add than to pay for unused gigabits.