In Europe, a large fraction of the Internet traffic is exchanged at interconnection points such as LINX in London, BNIX in Belgium, SFINX, in Paris. AMS-IX, based in Amsterdam is one of the oldest and the largest interconnection points in Europe.

As of this writing, AMS-IX connects more than 300 different networks on more than 500 different ports (see http://www.ams-ix.net/connected/). The total aggregated traffic is more than 500 Gbps during peak hours. Like most large IXes, AMS-IX is distributed on several locations in Amsterdam ( http://www.ams-ix.net/technical/topology.html ). On October 27, 2008, power failed at one of the location. This lead to a severe drop in the amount of traffic carried by AMS-IX. During the failure, AMS-IX aggregated only 300 Gbps of traffic (see attached image from http://www.ams-ix.net/technical/stats/) . This implies that 200 Gbps of traffic had to be rerouted on other peering links in Europe or elsewhere, a major traffic shift !