Summary

  • SwissIX prices the physical port and the service separately. A full 400G service has a different cost from simply ordering a 400G port.
  • Its route-server documentation is public. Filters, peering choices and backup conditions help determine how useful the connection will be.

The attractive number is 400G. The revealing numbers are 1,000 and 3,100. In SwissIX's price schedule effective from July 2026, those are the monthly Swiss-franc charges for a 400G LR4 port and a full 400G service respectively. Added together, they make CHF4,100 before VAT and other applicable charges. The socket is only one line on the bill.

That separation gives a network room to grow: lower, burstable service tiers can use the same 400G port. It also gives procurement a reason to slow down before comparing headline speeds. Cross-connects must be ordered from the data centre, and Equinix locations carry a port surcharge. A price beside a port speed is not an all-in connectivity quote.

SwissIX describes itself as a nonprofit association operating across eight Swiss data centres, with 400G available at Colozueri.ch, Digital Realty ZUR1 and Equinix ZH4. Its claim to be the country's largest exchange by port capacity and bandwidth is an operator claim, not an independent ranking established here. The more useful question for a particular network is narrower: which destinations can this connection help it reach?

The server that does not carry the packets

SwissIX publishes the relevant starting points in its Route Server Guide. The two servers use AS42476, with IPv4 addresses 91.206.52.252 and 91.206.53.253. These details are available on the public website; they are not confined to a members' portal.

A route server passes reachability information between connected networks. User traffic takes a different path, travelling between their routers over the exchange's switching infrastructure. This distinction is fundamental to RFC 7947. It also explains why looking for the exchange's own ASN in a traffic path is a poor test of whether an exchange is being used: a transparent route server normally does not add its number to that path.

The practical complication is that a working connection does not make every advertised route acceptable. SwissIX checks announcements against routing records and origin authorisations. Its documented rules reject ordinary routes with an RPKI Invalid result; a NotFound result leaves further IRR checks to decide the outcome. Other filters also apply. The port can be healthy while a particular destination remains unavailable through it.

There is a public way to investigate that distinction. SwissIX's Looking Glass page describes searches by network, peer or prefix, including explanations for rejected routes. That is a diagnostic resource, not a measurement of customer experience. No live query results or independent traffic measurements underpin this article.

The buying decision therefore has two parts that meet only in operation. One pays for room to carry traffic. The other establishes which traffic can sensibly take that route. More capacity will not fix an announcement rejected for the wrong origin authorisation.

Correction, 25 October 2026: The earlier version incorrectly said SwissIX's route-server parameters and routing documentation were not public. The official guide and Looking Glass description are publicly available. The article also corrects the distinction between exchanging route information and forwarding traffic; it makes no claim about when those documents first appeared.