M247

We talked to Alin Stefanescu, M247’s Global Network Architect. Alin takes care of the hardware design of the global network, software design and the interoperability of all network assets.

Tell us about your business and what you do?

M247 is a leading connectivity-led cloud services partner, enabling businesses to scale and transform with technology. With connections to 37 of the world’s most important internet exchanges, we have a pretty deep understanding of the international peering sector. I am the go-to man for interconnections like transit and peering. M247 customers want the best possible experience, but cost-effectiveness is key, so as part of my role I do a lot of research into quality versus price.

When and why did you connect to NL-ix?

Our initial introduction to NL-IX was in the Amsterdam in 2016 with a 10 Gig port. We wanted to peer with a network that was only available on NL-ix. At the time we were pushing lots of traffic to this operator over IP Transit so the costs were very high on both sides. Peering over NL-ix saved us and our customers a lot of money.

How did you end up peering at NL-ix Frankfurt?

When we heard about the peering opportunities in Frankfurt and Copenhagen back in 2018, we said let’s do those too. They offered excellent value for money, so we booked 100 Gig in Frankfurt and 10 Gig in Copenhagen (which we doubled a year later). Starting with 100 Gig is quite unusual as we only carry that amount of traffic on the biggest exchanges in the world, but by then we had complete confidence in the platform, and the price was extremely good. Traffic in Frankfurt grew pretty fast and kept growing. We run a lot of traffic over this port and even though it’s not as much as with the biggest exchanges, we have found the price-vs- quality balance on NL-ix to be a lot better.

How would you rate the NL-ix experience?

Our overall experience with NL-ix has been extremely good. Since the moment we started negotiations things happened quickly and easily. The NL-ix tech department are awesome – you can tell by the Route Server Configurator which is unique on the market. It allows a new member to start peering with multiple peers and maximise traffic from day one while cutting out some networks if needed -all in a few clicks. It’s exceptionally user-friendly and helpful, with excellent ISP-related info and the ability to peer by simply checking a box. It shows how much traffic you are exchanging with every other peer – you don’t need a specialised app for eg netflow data, plus you can get an accurate future growth forecast.

On resilience, we generally make up our mind over time, and over time the NL-ix platform has proved extremely stable, which is key. In fact, we have not experienced a single outage since we joined.