What is a Digital Exchange?
Think of it as the Internet equivalent of a huge roundabout where companies build their own roads to it. That means traffic can get to it and then decide the best route for their onward journey.
Those roads can equally come from other Exchanges such as in London, Bristol, Manchester and Birmingham.
Everyone then pays a share for the upkeep of the roundabout in return for the benefits it brings to the wider community.
Technically what is a Digital Exchange?
A Digital Exchange is a hub of high-speed Internet connections with capability to support the next generation of information networks and Edge Computing. Within business, academia, creative sectors and Smart Cities, there is a growing need for lots of data needs to be recorded, sent for processing and returned in a very short space of time.
Digital Exchanges can be connected to other satellite Exchanges to form a mesh that efficiently covers a geographical area. Computing resources can be placed at the Exchanges so there isn’t even a further millisecond delay, such is the need by Smart Places.
Systems within a Digital Exchange will typically communicate at speeds of 40 to 100 Gbps, from outside, systems connect in the order of 10 to 25Gbps.
What are the benefits?
The Exchange is a concentration of high speed connections and computing resources, as well as the organisations that own them, which means commercial relationships can be very quickly solidified with physical network connections in a matter of hours rather than months. One can use the services of the other at sub-millisecond speeds rather than 10s of milliseconds. The financial sector already knows the importance of speeds.
Edge Computing describes how data can be collected locally and processed locally as opposed to sending them across to Europe or the USA to some Cloud Computing facility.
What are we looking to achieve?
The first Digital Exchange in Dorset, that we call the Bournemouth Local Access Internet eXchange (LAIX), is sited just south of Bournemouth University and Arts University Bournemouth by Talbot Village. The LAIX will be providing live services from August 2020. It will further be connected to the Lansdowne area of Bournemouth by the end of the year as well as Ferndown, Tower Park and the Dorset Innovation Park.
This will be a huge step in bringing high speed connectivity between East and West Dorset and also to open up opportunities in both areas.
Initially, it is anticipated that the Digital Exchange will support the advancement of services in Healthcare and Transport. It isn’t about the technology behind the Exchange that is important, it’s the enabling of digital transformation that is key.