On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, BCIX sets new impulses in the ICT sector for a sustainable IT infrastructure

As the first IXP, the BCIX extensively discussed and analyzed the topic of sustainability in public peering with various industry representatives.

Conclusion: Sustainability will be one of the success factors for the development of the ICT industry in expanding and developing IT infrastructure, not only in times when energy is scarce. The BCIX will anchor the topic in its future technology strategy in order to make the Internet infrastructure even more resilient in the long term.

The event with over 250 guests brought together representatives from business and politics. Difficulties and challenges from the point of view of manufacturers, infrastructure operators, users and politicians were discussed in three panels.

The starting point for the discussions was Max Schulze’s keynote. Schulze is co-founder of the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA) and has dealt with the reasons for and the effects of sustainable development in IT. Fiber optic providers, data center operators and network operators then had their say and showed which possibilities and solutions are conceivable and feasible if politics played their part.

"Today’s Internet has been continuously built step by step through innovations of many smart people," said Dr. Schomaker, from the SICP at the University of Paderborn. “Politicians must prevent this development and expansion process from stagnating. Allowing market participants to design the infrastructure of the future freely and according to their needs requires this support and freedom for creative ideas.”

Steffen David, Managing Director of I/P/B/ and himself a data center operator in Berlin, mentioned possibilities for the sustainable operation of data centers. "Heat recovery and feeding into the district heating concept of the city of Berlin would already be possible from our data center and is the declared goal," says David.

The event took place in the historic industrial building of today’s Brewdog brewery in Marienfelde. It was rewarded with a lot of praise and enthusiasm from the participants, not least because the cross-industry, interactive discussion of the challenges and opportunities of a climate-friendly Internet infrastructure was unique.

On the second day of the event, the BCIX dedicated itself to its technical DNA. Hardware manufacturers, carriers and ISPs provided insights into current and future trends in the field of peering at the historical trotting track in Mariendorf.

Jonas Vermeulen from Nokia presented the technical developments for bandwidths of 800G and more. Marcus Stoegbauer from Vattenfall Eurofiber presented the background to the technical details and developments in FTTH access technology.

Vincentz Petzholtz from inter.link and Fiona Weber from WOBCOM addressed best practices in the areas of network design, traffic engineering and secure peering.

“"Sustainable Internet made in Berlin" requires even closer cooperation between all stakeholders: the city, electricity providers, hardware manufacturers, data center operators and IXPs. We will do our part,” says Pascal Kube, board member of BCIX.