That is one key discovering from a brand new unbiased research by the Dstream Group revealed as we speak. Commissioned by DE-CIX, the world’s main Web Alternate (IX) operator, as we speak’s publication of the research coincides with the thirtieth anniversary of the corporate’s first IX, DE-CIX Frankfurt. Along with benchmarking and rating the world’s Prime 10 Digital Capitals, the research presents a complete evaluation of the financial worth of Web Exchanges, demonstrating that DE-CIX Frankfurt, the biggest IX in Europe, contributes near 4 billion Euros yearly to the German nationwide economic system by optimizing the efficiency of digital companies and growing the resilience of firm networks.
The Prime 10 Digital Capital Rating
Beginning with a pool of greater than 30 of the world’s most important digital infrastructure hubs, the Dstream Group’s evaluation benchmarked the highest ten areas globally, dubbed Digital Capitals, and ranked them as follows:
1 Frankfurt
2 Amsterdam
3 London
4 Washington D.C. (incl. Ashburn & Reston)
5 Paris
6 Singapore
7 Tokyo
8 Bay Space (incl. San Francisco & Silicon Valley)
9 Hong Kong
10 New York
The evaluation investigates the infrastructure classes Web Exchanges, knowledge facilities, connectivity infrastructure, and networks, and the German metropolis of Frankfurt takes the primary place. With 20 flourishing Web Exchanges and 200 terabits of related port capability throughout town, 2,500 distinctive networks and probably the most extremely interconnected knowledge middle panorama on the earth, Frankfurt is peerless throughout the world interconnection panorama.
“Frankfurt has emerged because the world’s Digital Capital in 2025 — a title earned by a long time of funding in digital infrastructure. With the world’s strongest interconnection hub at its core, town now leads the way in which in shaping how the worldwide Web connects, grows, and creates worth,” feedback co-author of the research, guide Serge Radovcic of the Dstream Group, on the findings. In keeping with Radovcic, sure cities achieved prime rankings for one particular infrastructure space – such because the Washington D.C. metropolitan area (together with Ashburn, Virginia) for knowledge facilities or Singapore for connectivity infrastructure – whereas different cities achieved excessive placements on a number of standards.
London, for instance, achieved good outcomes for each IXs and knowledge facilities. Nonetheless, Frankfurt was the one metropolis to attain excessive rankings in three classes: the highest place in IXs (shared with Amsterdam) and networks, and second place in knowledge facilities.
Web Exchanges – the hidden champions of the digital economic system
Utilizing DE-CIX Frankfurt as a foundation, the authors additionally regarded into the financial impression of peering – or the direct interconnection of networks – through an Web Alternate. “Web Exchanges enable for the optimization of information flows, making networks not solely extra resilient, but in addition lowering latency and growing stability. On this research, we needed to quantify the optimistic impression of IXs – because the hidden champions of digital infrastructure – on enterprise normally. So far as we all know, that is the primary evaluation of its sort to be undertaken,” Radovcic explains.
The analysts calculated the market share of the IX for carrying knowledge flows of each finish customers and companies in Germany. This was mixed with KPIs in financial domains that may be enhanced by community optimization, akin to the price of community outages, the impression of latency (community delays) on e-commerce revenues, and the impression of latency, community stability, and predictability on the success of cloud initiatives. For every area, calculated on a German nationwide degree, the proportional added worth generated by resilient, secure, and low latency community interconnection over an Web Alternate, in comparison with different connectivity options, was estimated. The outcomes present a direct financial contribution of DE-CIX Frankfurt of greater than €3.7 billion per yr to the nationwide German economic system.
“I’m delighted to have the ability to current the outcomes of this new unbiased research, displaying the significance of Frankfurt for world Web site visitors and demonstrating the significance of Web Exchanges to our digital economic system,” commented Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX, on the discharge of the research. “With out high-performance and resilient digital infrastructure there may be no digital improvement. That is changing into more and more clear with the most recent developments in synthetic intelligence, driving innovation in areas like e-health, the monetary sector, manufacturing, autonomous automobiles, and even humanoid robots. The long run will demand even better density of digital infrastructure and extra Digital Hubs and Capitals to fulfill the necessities of the subsequent wave of digital evolution. However the metropolis of Frankfurt will proceed to shine because the world’s most essential aggregation level for digital infrastructure – the powerhouse of interconnection.”
A mix of analysis utilizing uncooked knowledge from publicly obtainable sources, the collation of revealed knowledge from revered trade sources akin to PeeringDB and Euro-IX, and the outcomes of knowledgeable interviews had been used for the benchmarking and calculations. The benchmarking takes round 30 indicators into consideration and evaluates the alternatives and obstacles of the respective areas with regard to the established order of networks, knowledge centres, connectivity, and Web Exchanges. The total methodology may be discovered within the research, “Frankfurt: The Digital Capital – Web Exchanges as a hit issue for digital ecosystems & economies”, which may be downloaded right here: https://www.de-cix.internet/en/assets/white-papers/digital-capital-frankfurt
