The immense growth of South Africa’s biggest Internet exchange

South Africa’s largest Internet exchange point (IXP), NAPAfrica, has grown substantially, from recording peak traffic of 532Mbps when it launched in 2012 to hitting five terabits-per-second (Tbps) in early 2025.

It is Africa’s fastest-growing IXP, and it is among the top 10 IXPs globally by total traffic volume. It reached the milestone of 100Gbps in 2016, 500Gbps in 2018, 1Tbps in 2020, 2Tbps in 2022, 3Tbps in 2023, and 4Tbps in late 2023.

It operates three IXPs hosted in Teraco data centres in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban.

According to Teraco head of platforms, Michele McCann, the African Internet community’s willingness to embrace the value of peering contributed significantly to its growth and success.

Additionally, she said the increasing use of data-intensive applications, enterprises moving into the cloud, and increasing demand for video, content, and gaming delivery services are also significant contributors.

“[The community has also embraced] the increasing use of data-intensive applications, enterprises continuing to move into the cloud, and the ever-increasing demand for video, content, and gaming delivery services,” said McCann.

“These trends have driven greater network traffic levels between cloud and service providers, enterprises, and end users across Africa, which has contributed to NAPAfrica’s tremendous growth.”

NAPAfrica’s traffic reached 1Tbps in March 2020 — roughly 1,884 times the peak traffic it recorded at launch — and its traffic has increased fivefold since then.

NAPAfrica attributed the surge to 1Tbps to a big jump in Internet traffic during the Covid-19 pandemic. Its growth has continued at a slower rate since the pandemic.

NAPAfrica had over 250 carriers peering at its IXP when it hit 1Tbps traffic.

Teraco lead for interconnection and peering Andrew Owens said its members also included global content and cloud providers, managed service providers, and a growing enterprise base.

“The exchange started with five members and today has in excess of 440 unique ASNs connected from across the work, including 26 African countries,” he added.

Owens said enterprises and networks navigating to crucial content and cloud services helped drive NAPAfrica’s growth, as did the popularity of platforms like Netflix, Facebook, and YouTube.

The chart below shows NAPAfrica’s traffic throughput and member growth from 2014 to 2025.

The IXP blew past 3Tbps in February 2023, just days after telling MyBroadband that it anticipated reaching the milestone.

It said online gaming had significantly contributed to it achieving the milestone.

“The online gaming community added over 400Gbps of additional traffic to the exchange,” NAPAfrica stated.

Internet service provider Afrihost said an update for Call of Duty Warzone 2 resulted in a significant traffic surge, peaking for around 30 minutes before gradually dropping.

Popular gaming platforms like Akamai (PlayStation Store, Microsoft (Xbox Store), and Valve (Steam) peer at the IXP. The Call of Duty update would’ve run through Valve’s peering.

NAPAfrica hit 4Tbps of traffic on 13 November 2023. This represented traffic growth of roughly 33% over nine months. Contributing to this was the addition of TikTok to its platform.

McCann explained that the IXP is attractive to prominent content providers like TikTok as it has more than 250 carriers and a large member base.

“One of the most significant benefits of an active peering community (or IXP) is the cost-effective, efficient distribution of content to the consumer,” she added.

McCann said demand for business services like cloud and entertainment continues to grow.

NAPAfrica broke the 5Tbps threshold on 4 March 2025, and its member base has grown to more than 655.

“With 655 networks peering at its exchange points, NAPAfrica continues to play a critical role in keeping African Internet traffic local, reducing costs, reducing costs, and improving network performance,” it said.

NAPAfrica currently has 2,244 physical connected points and a connected capacity of 41.5 terabits.