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The Space-IX initiative will work to outline how best to connect the ever-growing orbital infrastructure ecosystem
This week, the world’s largest Internet Exchange (IX) operator, Germany’s DE-CIX, has announced it is setting its future goals sky-high – literally. With its new Space-IX initiative, the Frankfurt-based company says it is not only exploring how best to provide interconnect services to orbiting satellites, but even the merits of putting IX infrastructure itself into space.
The goal of the project, as outlined on the company website, Is to ‘enable intelligent interconnection between LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites and ensure efficient integration with terrestrial infrastructure, cloud platforms, and content providers’.
“Wherever networks are created, interconnection should follow,” says Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX. “We’ve spent 30 years building the backbone of the Internet here on Earth. Now we’re bringing that same neutral, high-performance interconnection model to the next layer of digital infrastructure, above the clouds and to the stars.”
LEO satellites, such as SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, are playing an increasingly large role in the global connectivity ecosystem, delivering connectivity to places hard to reach for traditional, terrestrial infrastructure. However, interconnection with terrestrial networks can be challenging, particular when delivering latency-sensitive services.
As a result, DE-CIX is increasingly focussing on connecting to satellites using emerging technologies. For example, as part of the European Space Agency’s OFELIAS project, DE-CIX is collaborating with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to explore laser-based communications between satellites and ground stations. These optical data links are becoming increasingly popular for intersatellite communication, offering significantly higher data rates and lower latency than traditional radio frequency links. Connecting satellites to Earth via laser, however, is more complicated, requiring smarter protocols and algorithms overcome cloud cover and atmospheric interference.
But what if we could remove the need to beam some of that data back to Earth entirely? This is the core premise behind the idea of launching orbital data centres, both for compute and storage purposes. Such deployments would have some attractive advantages, including access to near-limitless solar energy and server racks being cooled by the vacuum of space. On the other hand, launch costs for such infrastructure is still largely prohibitive, and maintaining or upgrading the physical equipment would require a significant leap in autonomous robotics technology.
Nonetheless, the global tech industry is taking this possibility very seriously; Axiom Space, for example, have announced plans to launch their first two Orbital Data Center (ODC) nodes before the end of 2025.
For DE-CIX, this seemingly inevitable deployment of yet more satellites and space-based data centres will necessitate a seismic change in IX architecture.
“As satellites become part of the digital supply chain, whether delivering broadband to underserved communities, powering AI for businesses, or enabling orbital analytics, we need an architecture that unites space and Earth into one seamless ecosystem,” said Ivanov. “This collaboration is the very beginning of our answer to that challenge.
In related news, last month DE-CIX added Starlink to its interconnection system in India, becoming the first IX platform in the world to do so.
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