Be the Internet

The NL-ix Vision: Be the Internet

At NL-ix, Be the Internet has always been more than a slogan. It reflects the fundamental shift in how organisations use and rely on the Internet. This vision shows how NL-ix adapts to diverse business needs, empowering both traditional and enterprise customers to meet the demands of their own operations. It explains how our Be the Internet philosophy helps organisations unlock the full potential of being truly integrated into this global network of innovation and growth.

Cloud & Internet
In this new digital era, all companies live in the Cloud

Historically all corporate IT was dedicated and on-premise and protected by layers of physical security, unreachable by the outside world (the ‘Jericho’ model) and business locations and private datacenters were interconnected only by a dedicated private network. However, the Cloudification of private workloads into IaaS, business applications into SaaS and the shift of remaining hybrid infrastructure to Neutral Datacenters changed all that.

Nowadays, for practically any organisation, Cloud and associated Internet based hybrid interconnection has become crucial for core business: both for essential business processes and for the business value chain, which has become largely Internet based.

Internet is the new Corporate Backbone

For some, the perception of the Internet as the foundation of core business isn’t new: companies for whom the Internet itself is core business, such as ISPs and content providers, understood from day one the necessity and advantages of being an integral part of the Internet’s core infrastructure — and the quality, control, and reliability it offers.

But since the Cloudification revolution, something fundamental has changed for enterprises, as their Business IT has shifted not only from on-premise to private workloads in the Cloud and towards Neutral Datacenters — accessed via the Internet — but especially to tens, or more often hundreds, of SaaS applications that run over the Internet.

For enterprises, Internet nowadays is the lifeline for almost all primary business processes and just as crucial for their core business as it always was for Internet Service and Content parties. The Internet now carries all data in transit between the on-premise IT and cloud-based business IT where data is processed or stored, and has effectively become the new corporate backbone.

It is for thát reason reliability, performance, security, insight, and control on that Internet based corporate backbone has become crucial for enterprises.

Be the Internet
Are you CONNECTING to the Internet? Or are you PART OF the Internet?

If you just ‘connect’ to Internet as an end-user, using a standard Internet Access service, you handover your traffic and leave all control to someone else. It is like using public transportation: you rely on the driver, but he might make detours, oversubscribe and will prioritise on generic needs of all passengers (or his own costs and profit) but at least not specifically on your needs. And Internet remains a black box for you, so you are in the dark. To be in control of your own digital destiny and being able to make your own choices on Internet, just like you are when you are driving your own car instead of taking the bus, you need to be ‘part of’ the Internet.

Be part of the Internet -> Be the Internet

If you need to have grip, be in control and optimise your Internet based corporate backbone on your business needs, you have to become part of the Internet, instead of only connecting to it. We call this ‘Be the Internet’. But wat defines being part of the Internet?

Basically, it means an architecture in which you take responsibility for the routing of your own network on the Internet and in which you are recognised by the global Internet as an independent network (‘Autonomous System’ or AS) with its own (routing) policies, able to make its own choices in how traffic reaches the rest of the world. This is especially relevant for destinations you trust, and which are crucial for you.

We have got your back

One can look at that capability from a technical design perspective, which includes things like your own IP addresses, an AS number, BGP routers, Peering, Transit, Internet Slicing, and network security. That can be overwhelming. But our specialists and architects are happy to escort you into that world.

But you don’t have to do everything yourself. Just like in the transport analogy, instead of driving your own car you can also have a private chauffeur and still be in control and able to make your own choices. NL-ix is all about enabling customers to Be the Internet, but making that as simple as possible.

Internet Value Chain

Each company is part of a value chain comprising of its suppliers, partners, customers, employees, etc. The digital communication throughout this value chain, between your own Business IT and that of rest of the value chain, has become tightly integrated and data-driven and has largely moved to Internet. 

So, Internet is not only crucial for reaching your own IT that now lives in the cloud, but also for communication with your now Internet based digital value chain. If that Internet (based) Value Chain breaks, your physical value chain is most likely severely impacted.

Being part of the Internet (instead of just connecting to it), enables you to regain insight and end-to-end control of that Internet Value Chain. The business goal of Be the Internet is to empower you to take full responsibility for your own digital journey and the Internet (based) value chain that supports it.

Internet Exchanges are the heart of Be the Internet

Being part of the Internet starts at its very foundation, at Internet Exchanges, where enterprises come together to interconnect with local and global peers.

NL-ix represents a unique kind of Internet Exchange in this regard. As a distributed platform we operate an ultra-low-latency fabric across Europe with a broad range of interconnection services. That enables us to be there for the traditional IX customers and their needs, but also enable the Enterprise market to Be the Internet.

We feel a huge responsibility in enabling our customers, both traditional and enterprise, to get the maximum value and control out of being part of the Internet and help them fulfil their business requirements.

Business Internet Exchange
What is driving us? It is the customer and their needs!

Our roots are with the service providers, wholesale carriers, content networks and infrastructure partners who have been in control of their Internet with us from the very beginning. They helped us shape the design of our network: scalable, efficient, ultra-low-latency and reliable. And they continue to drive how we evolve, from optimising Transit paths to supporting advanced Peering strategies across markets.

At the same time, enterprises and their needs have become a new constraint for our development. For them, security, auditability, resilience, co-design and engaging with a trusted partner that unburdens them, directly affects business operations. That is why we have built a distributed platform guaranteeing maximum reach, why we operate a resilient A+B fabric for maximum availability, why we tightly integrate security into our fabric. We try to keep customer traffic on our own network as much as possible to ensure consistent performance, reliability, and security. That is also why we developed the ICON user interface to provide our customers clear insight and full control over how their Internet traffic flows, helping them manage their digital journey more effectively.

Just as enterprises take advantage of the long-term groundwork, originally laid for the traditional ISP and content provider market, advantages of recent developments instigated by enterprise needs, now feed back to our traditional customers. For us there is no difference, it is all Internet, and we are focused on enabling a trusted platform tuned on customer business requirements for all users, throughout Europe and beyond.

It is Internet that is driving us and at NL-ix we feel Internet in our veins, for 25 years already. The Be the Internet principle is the driving force for us in how we design, build, and run our network fabric, our services, and our innovation, in order to enable our customers. And inherently it is the driver for our relationship with our customers, to listen to our customers and their challenges, and for how we handle each individual customer call.

The Leading European Business Internet Exchange

For NL-ix, making a strict distinction between traditional wholesale customers and the emerging enterprise customers is getting more and more artificial. In the end many of the wholesale parties like service providers have the same enterprise end-customers behind them with the same business needs, and their added value is changing from just providing a bit pipe into that of an integrator and trusted advisor. In the end we both want to support the enterprise end-customer in their digital journey.

Our ambition is to be The Leading European Business Internet Exchange, which for our customers - enterprises, providers but also system integrators - translates into a promise of an integrated European network fabric and a comprehensive set of services supporting the evolving business needs of our customers, wherever they are in Europe, or wherever their Internet Value Chain lives in Europe.

Secure Internet
Inline security by design

As enterprises need to rely on Internet as their new corporate backbone, exposing their business IT to the world, the security of that backbone is imperative. Security can no longer be optional or an add-on - it has to be built directly into the foundation of interconnection. 

We think that being at the heart of the Internet, and aiming to be the leading European Business Internet Exchange, we have a special responsibility to listen to the security needs and challenges of our customers and find ways to revolutionise the WAN and Internet Security with innovative inline security solutions which enable our customers to implement measures that previously did not exist. Even if that requires us to push our vendors and partners to assist us with developing those innovative solutions: we do not accept the status quo. Our security innovations and features are 100% customer-driven.

Security Isolation Domains

NL-ix offers the possibility to create network Isolation Domains using Internet Slicing technology: the ability to separate different groups of traffic or destinations in a way they cannot influence each other, and they are unreachable from other domains. For example, you can create a dedicated Trusted Application Connect slice with only those networks and SaaS Applications you trust. That isolation domain will not be reachable from the rest of the Internet and thus will be impossible to attack from the rest of the Internet. 

In the same way we offer Private Cloud Connects and a Private Datacenter Network slicing option to isolate traffic streams with your own workloads in the cloud or towards Private Datacenter infrastructure from the rest of the Internet.

DDoS Protection

On top of isolation technology, we recently deployed inline DDoS Protection, embedded in our Exchange fabric, based on Nokia Deepfield technology. Traffic is cleaned right on the edge of our 100-datacenter network across Europe by our Nokia FP5-powered core IX routers which detect and filter malicious traffic. No detours to cloud scrubbing centers, always-on and with instant detection and mitigation. We can protect against attacks faster, reduce latency and keep critical infrastructure safe. It is a smarter, more scalable approach to security that fits perfectly with how we are evolving our network.

Protected Cloud Connect - Secure and Robust

The connectivity to your own workloads or key resources in the cloud can be made private and more secure using a Cloud Connect, which provides a private path outside of Internet routing, offers bandwidth guarantees, a substantially lower latency then VPN tunnels (due to VPN encryption/decryption) and often a better throughput (due to the latency difference).

Traditionally Cloud Connect availability focused on Cloud Exchanges: physical locations where ramp-ups where consolidated. Less attention was paid to the detour a mandatory physical location introduces and transparency on what happens after that ramp-up, as the actual physical cloud location is always somewhere else.

NL-ix protected Cloud Connect provides secure transport of customer traffic directly, without detours, from the customer location to the front door of a Cloud or resource. We implement your connection end-to-end over our own backbone, with optional boosted resilience utilising our A and B fabric, optionally to three or four physical geographically dispersed exit points of a Cloud resource and always at ultra-low-latency. Secure and robust.

Secure Service Edge (SSE)

For our customers, Internet security does not stop here - enterprises are considering or using Secure Service Edge (SSE) solutions to enable enforcement of Zero Trust based security policies in their network as part of a SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) network configuration.

We already support that need by providing direct low-latency connectivity to Cloud based SSE solutions like Zscaler, Netskope, Palo Alto and Cisco. But the customer requirement to prevent a cloud detour and a loss of route control for all their traffic, so the need for a sovereign SSE, is a challenge that keeps us up at night - how can we implement an inline SSE, natively into our Exchange fabric and thus innovate in that space as well?

Secure Internet

We are not a security company, we are an Internet Exchange. But security nowadays is one of the cornerstones of what Enterprises require from Internet as their new corporate backbone. Inherently for us it is indispensable in the way we want to effectuate Be the Internet for our customers.

Personal touch
Infrastructure as a service, with a personal touch

Technology, flexibility, and innovation drives what we do, but people are always at the heart at NL-ix. When you call NL-ix, you reach real engineers who know the network. When support is needed, we respond quickly and with care. Our architects and sales specialists listen closely to customer requirements and base our networks designs directly on the requested value. We build and develop most things ourselves, giving us a very large internal knowledge base, where everyone in the company could potentially help with a customer case, on different aspects.

This personal, hands-on approach makes a difference - especially for enterprise teams under pressure. It’s the combination of robust infrastructure and human connection that defines us. Customers do not just get bandwidth, they get a trusted partner. We are a European Internet Exchange, and our multicultural team reflects the Internet itself: diverse, distributed, and connected. This diversity strengthens how we support and collaborate with customers across Europe.

More than just a network - a community

At NL-ix, we also believe in the human side of interconnection. Our annual Late Summer Drink is a good example. It is not about sales, but about meeting face-to-face, collaboration, strengthening bonds, and building trust. Events like this remind us that behind every connection is a person. They are a vital part of what makes Internet work and what makes our community resilient.

The path forward

For nearly 25 years, we have lived and breathed the Internet. Be the Internet continues to drive how we build and operate our network, how we design our services and how we work with customers.

As we move forward, our mission remains simple: stay agile, stay personal, and stay committed. Build infrastructure you can rely on, and relationships you can count on. Whether you are an enterprise in need of secure, low-latency connectivity or a global carrier moving terabits of traffic, you are part of our story. And we are here - to connect, to support, and to grow with you.