Neil LimCIRA in talks with other provinces to establish IXPs
In the last few months, CIRA has been working to establish or support the expansion of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) across Canada. CIRA has initiated talks with Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Montreal, and Halifax to help them establish or support the expansion of six key nodes for a national IXP infrastructure. 
The discussions will continue for the next few months.
According to CIRA’s article, “Most of Canada’s domestic Internet traffic flows outside of the country before eventually reaching its destination.” Canada needs more IXPs in order to connect with each other. In addition, more IXPs in Canada will ensure “Canadian traffic stays in Canada more of the time, creating a more
robust, higher performing and more economical domestic network.”
CIRA also stated that there are about 350 IXPs in the world and it has been proven to be an essential component to other countries’ Internet infrastructure. The U.S. has about 85 IXPs; whereas, Canada only has two IXPs, one in Ottawa and the other in Toronto. CIRA’s perspective is the main stakeholders in Canada’s digital economy, such as network operators, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and others should collaborate to create a national IXP fabric and make the necessary infrastructure investments.
What are IXPs?
For anyone who is unsure of what IXPs are, it is an infrastructure (or a
large switch) that enables multiple ISPs
to exchange data between their networks. The addition of IXPs would take
out the cost of passing information through other ISPs. Usually, an ISP
is billed when their Internet traffic is passed through another ISP. IXPs allow local network traffic to take shorter, faster routes between
other networks, resulting in better traffic flow and reducing network
costs overall.