Israeli Internet Exchange

The Israeli Internet Exchange connects Israeli internet service providers through a neutral, shared communications network, ensuring that traffic between a user in Israel and a locally hosted website or service stays inside the country rather than being routed abroad.[1] Without such an exchange, a request from one Israeli ISP's subscriber to a website hosted by another Israeli provider could have been routed through servers in the United States and then back to Israel — a path that would increase latency, raise international bandwidth costs, and introduce unnecessary dependence on foreign infrastructure.[2]

Beyond traffic routing, the IIX serves several additional purposes identified by the Israel Internet Association: reducing international communications costs, accelerating internet use for Israeli consumers, strengthening the network's resilience to cyberattacks, and lowering barriers for new internet service providers seeking to enter the Israeli market.[1] The exchange is described as neutral and equal-access, while an early Globes account noted that its operator was unaffiliated with any individual ISP.[1][3]

The IIX was established in 1996 after Israel's Ministry of Communications required internet providers to disconnect from the Inter-University Computation Center's network.[2] The exchange was initially administered under the Inter-University Computation Center before being transferred in the summer of 1996 to the Israel Internet Association, whose neutrality — unaffiliated with any internet access provider — made it a suitable long-term operator.[3]

At the time of its early operation, the exchange consisted of a Cisco 4700 router located at Netcom in the Orek building in Petah Tikva.[3] It connected to Bezeq by Frame Relay and to other Israeli providers by leased lines or Frame Relay, forming the domestic routing backbone that kept local traffic local.[3] The Israel Internet Association's own activity report confirms it had operated the IIX since 1996, identifying it as one of two core internet infrastructures it manages, alongside the national .IL domain-name registry.[1]

By January 2004, approximately 20 internet providers were connected to IIX and paying the Israel Internet Association for the service.[2] Recognizing growing data volumes and the potential vulnerability of a single-site exchange, the association began a project in November 2003 to establish a backup site alongside the existing Tel Aviv exchange.[2] Provider connections at that time used multiple telecommunications companies, including Bezeq, Med-1, and Cellcom.[2]

In July 2004, the association brought a second domestic exchange site online in parallel with the Tel Aviv location.[4] The new facility was situated in an underground Med-1 installation in Petah Tikva and was designed specifically to improve resilience and disaster preparedness.[4] Association board member Doron Shekmoni encouraged providers to connect to both sites so that a failure at one would not interrupt service on the other.[4] The two 2004 reports gave different availability figures: approximately 99.8% in January and approximately 99.98% in July.[2][4]

The Israel Internet Association's activity report covering June 2015 through May 2016 recorded significant growth in IIX's traffic volume: throughput had nearly doubled during the reporting period and was approaching 30 gigabits per second at peak usage.[1] In response to that growth, the association was weighing upgrades to 40- or 100-gigabit connections during 2016, though the report presented these as options under active consideration rather than completed upgrades.[1]

During this same period, the association expanded the technical infrastructure co-located with the IIX. Working with Verisign, it installed what it described as Israel's first gTLD server in late 2015, enabling Israeli users to resolve .com and .net domain names by querying a local server rather than relying on equivalent servers abroad.[1] The installation was intended to improve browsing speeds and strengthen the network's resilience to denial-of-service attacks.[1] In addition, a J-type root server was installed at the facility — complementing an F-type root server the association said it had operated for eleven years — providing a further layer of reference for gTLD servers and country-code domain servers, including those serving .IL.[1]

By March 2020, with Israeli ISPs connecting to the exchange at rates of up to 100 gigabits per second, the association's data showed that Israeli internet traffic to local websites had increased by 25% in just two weeks following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.[5] The association's board approved a recommendation by its CEO to allow ISPs to increase their IIX bandwidth at no additional cost during the coronavirus state of emergency, anticipating continued traffic growth.[5]

A June 2025 Globes report said the exchange managed by the Israel Internet Association measured aggregate traffic among approximately 23 Israeli providers, limited to traffic between Israeli sites and excluding visits to international platforms. It printed rates of about 300 GB per second during routine peak hours and about 400 GB per second on the Wednesday described.[6]

In March 2026, during the opening of Israel's campaign with Iran, Mako reported that combined traffic across IIX and IL-IX exceeded half a terabit per second, 25% above a June 2025 record it gave as about 400 gigabits per second.[7] The two reports are not directly comparable as written because they used different units: gigabits per second in Mako and gigabytes per second in Globes.[7][6] The services company managing the exchanges said operational changes in the preceding months enabled larger traffic volumes and direct connections for content and service providers; CEO Avi Nagar said he expected use of the new exchange to continue growing.[7]

A 2022 report had noted that major ISPs including Bezeq International, Cellcom, and Partner were connected to one another by fiber-optic links as a backup in case the exchange were damaged, and that damage to the central exchange could cause domestic Israeli traffic to be rerouted abroad — potentially slowing connections and raising costs.[8]