Brazil’s Internet Exchange Is Top 5 in the World. Latin America Has 39 Operational IXPs. The Peering Revolution Is Already Here, and Most Carriers Are Late.
São Paulo’s IX.br, Brazil’s national internet exchange point, ranks among the top five IXPs globally by number of connected autonomous systems. Not top five in Latin America. Top five in the world. Alongside AMS-IX in Amsterdam and Equinix in Ashburn. And across the region, 39 Internet Exchange Points now operate, handling traffic volumes that consistently exceed pre-pandemic projections. Latin America’s peering infrastructure isn’t developing. It’s arrived.
39 IXPs, World-Class Traffic Volumes, and a Peering Revolution That Most Carrier Strategies Haven’t Caught Up To
PeeringDB data and independent IXP operator reports confirm what regional network engineers have been watching for years: Latin American IXPs have reached traffic volumes and connected network counts that rival established exchanges in more mature internet markets.
IX.br, operated by NIC.br with exchange points in more than 30 Brazilian cities, is the most visible example. Its flagship São Paulo facility handles traffic volumes that place it in global top-tier company. More importantly for the regional network ecosystem, IX.br’s distributed model, with exchange points in secondary Brazilian cities, has created peering access for ISPs and carriers that would otherwise need to route traffic through São Paulo or international hubs to exchange local content.
The LATAM IXP landscape extends well beyond Brazil. Exchanges operate in Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Lima, Santiago, Mexico City, Panama, San José, and multiple Caribbean markets. The combined effect is a regional peering infrastructure that increasingly allows traffic between Latin American networks to stay within Latin America, rather than following historical patterns of routing via Miami, New York, or Europe and back.
- Operational Internet Exchange Points across Latin America and the Caribbean (PeeringDB, 2025)
The economic significance of 39 operational IXPs in Latin America becomes clear when you map it against the 40% content provider bandwidth share discussed in the previous analysis. Content providers, Netflix, YouTube, Meta, AWS, are major participants in IXP peering. They connect to exchanges precisely to reach the ISPs and carriers serving end users, delivering their traffic without transiting through third-party networks.
For an ISP or carrier that is an IXP member and peers with major content providers, the economics are substantially better than for one that accesses content provider traffic via transit. Transit is a paid service. Peering is a bilateral traffic exchange, typically at zero marginal cost, beyond the port fee for exchange access. As content providers grew from 21% to 40% of LATAM traffic, the economic advantage of peering access to those providers grew proportionally.
The carriers who joined Latin American IXPs early, when membership fees were a discussion about cost, are now in a very different economic position than those who delayed. The peering traffic volumes they access through IXP membership have grown substantially, and the transit costs they’ve avoided compound with the growth in content provider bandwidth.
Is your current transit strategy mapped against the 39 IXPs now operating in the region, or is your network still routing traffic the way it was designed five years ago?
Our Perspective
Gold Data’s approach to peering in the LATAM and Caribbean markets reflects our understanding of the value compound that IXP participation creates. The networks that are most effectively interconnected with the regional IXP ecosystem, through direct membership, through route server participation, and through bilateral peering relationships built around exchange infrastructure, have structural cost and performance advantages that are difficult to replicate through transit procurement alone.
For the Caribbean specifically, the IXP picture is more nascent than in mainland LATAM, which creates both a gap and an opportunity. Caribbean markets with emerging IXP infrastructure are at the stage where early participation creates the most advantage, before the exchange reaches the traffic volumes that make everyone want to join.
We see IXP development in Caribbean markets as directly complementary to the submarine cable connectivity infrastructure available in the region, including the emerging capacity coming online through projects like MANTA in the Gulf of Mexico. The submarine cable layer provides the physical connectivity capacity. IXP participation determines how efficiently that traffic can be exchanged within the region once it arrives.
What This Means for Your Business
For carriers and ISPs evaluating their 2026-2027 peering strategy, the 39 IXP count in LATAM creates a concrete checklist: which exchanges are operationally available on your key routes, what content providers are connected there, and what is your current access to those providers compared to what IXP participation would enable?
The analysis tends to be simple once it’s done. The carriers consistently surprised by the outcome are those who’ve never mapped their content provider traffic against available peering options, and discover that a significant portion of their transit spend is accessing traffic they could be peering for significantly less.
Ready to evaluate your LATAM peering strategy against the 39-IXP reality? Gold Data’s team understands the regional interconnection landscape. golddata.net
Key Terms Explained
IXP (Internet Exchange Point)
A physical infrastructure facility where multiple internet networks, ISPs, carriers, content providers, connect to exchange traffic directly, reducing reliance on transit providers. Latin America now has 39 operational IXPs.
Autonomous System (AS)
A network or group of networks under common administrative control with a unique routing identifier (ASN). The number of ASes connected to an IXP is a primary measure of its size and utility. IX.br’s connected AS count places it in global top 5.
Route Server
A shared infrastructure at an IXP that allows all connected networks to exchange routing information without requiring individual bilateral agreements with every other participant. Route server participation is how networks access peering at scale on an exchange.
Port Fee
The cost of a network pays to connect its equipment to an IXP, typically a fixed monthly cost for a specific bandwidth port (1G, 10G, 100G). Once paid, peering traffic exchanged through the port has zero additional marginal cost.
Traffic Localization
Keeping internet traffic exchanges within the same geographic region rather than routing through distant hubs. LATAM IXP growth enables increasing traffic localization. São Paulo to Buenos Aires traffic stays in LATAM rather than routing via Miami.
Media Contact
Claudia Tradardi — Head of Marketing & Media Relations, Gold Data
claudia.tradardi@golddata.net