The ANIX Meeting 2026, organized by Namex and RASH in Tirana on February 5, confirmed a key point: in the Balkans and beyond, digital cooperation is not built on a single infrastructure or a single project, but through a harmonization of rules, infrastructure, regional cooperation, and expertise, driven by the Internet community. With 74 in-person attendees and 66 streaming participants, the event brought together ISPs, institutions, technical communities, and international stakeholders around a shared question: how to make local and regional interconnection more efficient and sustainable.
Harmonizing the rules
The institutional opening remarks set the tone for the day. From the European Commission (Daniel Kiapeš, DG CONNECT) came a clear call to action on the accession path of candidate countries and the fact that the European digital market is built concretely, also through shared infrastructure and active communities. Albanian Deputy Minister of Infrastructure and Energy Enkelejda Muçaj reiterated that European alignment requires coordinated work on regulatory frameworks, policy, and ecosystem engagement, with a focus on security and resilience. In this context, the support of the Italian Trade Agency (ICE), represented by Alkeida Bakalli, also contributes to positioning ANIX not merely as a traffic exchange point, but as a platform enabling relationships, opportunities, and regional cooperation.
This framework was further reinforced by the presentation of Altin Petre from the Albanian regulatory authority (AKEP), who outlined the new electronic communications framework: a path toward alignment with European rules (in particular, the European Electronic Communications Code), with greater emphasis on transparency, consumer protection, security, and oversight. The underlying message is that harmonization means reducing friction and uncertainty, creating more stable conditions for investment and cooperation.
Harmonizing infrastructure
It was the ANIX Meeting, and it would not have been complete without a progress update on ANIX itself. ANIX’s infrastructure is significantly increasing its reliability, but the key theme emerging from the presentations was not merely technical: it was the transition from a start-up phase to a phase of maturity.
Maurizio Goretti (Namex) and Arjan Xhelaj (RASH) explained that in 2026 the Internet Exchange Point has entered a more mature phase: from an initiative born to “keep local traffic within Albania” and build trust among operators, ANIX has become a neutral hub for the Albanian ecosystem, with 28 connected operators in a carrier-neutral data center and a more comprehensive base of access and content providers making it more attractive and useful. This transition also requires an evolution of the model: ANIX is moving beyond its initial pro-bono approach toward a more sustainable operational model, also thanks to the “one-stop shop” agreement between Namex and RASH, which simplifies onboarding and supports a gradual transition toward increasingly local management while preserving neutrality.
On the RASH side, growth is grounded in an infrastructural vision: ANIX can scale only if supported by adequate power, space, and connectivity. Data center upgrades, a further expansion roadmap, and growing international connectivity were all presented. The strategic direction is clear: increase the presence of in-country content (Meta and Netflix are already installed, Cloudflare is being activated, and others are under consideration) with the goal of routing a growing share of national traffic locally. ANIX’s maturity is not just an achievement: it is a starting point for making it easier for new players to join and a stable foundation for regional cooperation.
Harmonizing regional cooperation
The shift from national to regional scale emerged with particular force in the panel featuring operators from Albania and neighboring countries (Greece, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Italy), which shone a light on the real constraints operators deal with every day. The discussion made clear that the issue is not simply bandwidth availability, but infrastructural asymmetry between countries and, above all, the cost and quality of national and cross-border transport. Often the challenge is not reaching the customer’s network, but building efficient and sustainable links to borders and to key interconnection points.
A key distinction also emerged. Access, in many cases, can be sourced from the market; transport, however, remains a structural factor that directly affects latency, resilience, and competitiveness. With latency-sensitive applications such as real-time services, gaming, and trading, milliseconds are increasingly “visible” to users and businesses alike. The panel thus served as a reality check: it showed that regional cooperation cannot be a mere formula but must translate into concrete choices around transport, interconnection, and investment priorities.
The presentation by RIPE NCC (Jelena Ćosić and Jad El Cham) had already provided a useful analytical framework for contextualizing what emerged in the panel. The overview of the IXP landscape in the South-Eastern European (SEE) region, drawn from a recently published report, starts from a key observation: the SEE region is not homogeneous; it is traversed by structural differences (e.g., EU member vs. non-member countries, sea access, historical evolution of Internet and interconnection).
There are significant differences among IXPs in the region: from large hubs (Sofia, Bucharest, Athens) to very small nodes with purely local relevance (Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro). ANIX sits somewhere in the middle, with a relatively small number of OTTs and CDNs currently present, and a still significant share of local ISP-to-ISP paths transiting outside the country.
Within the region itself, according to analyses conducted using RIPE Atlas, more than one-fifth of paths exit the SEE and tend to converge on major European hubs (Vienna, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, Milan). RIPE NCC notes that proximity to major hubs is “a blessing and a curse at the same time”: it is convenient to buy capacity and route traffic outward, but doing so risks stunting local peering and domestic investment, and exporting capital out of the local economy. This is the same delicate balance that emerged in the panel: leveraging proximity to hubs without giving up on building regional infrastructure and cooperation.
RIPE NCC’s key recommendations for IXPs in the region are to establish functional governance structures and strong communities (which is precisely what we have sought to do with ANIX), and to incentivize peering and regional cooperation, the central theme of this very Meeting.
Harmonizing data and expertise
RIPE NCC emphasized that their report relies on data gathered through the RIPE Atlas service, and therefore how important it is to maintain data hygiene: IXP membership data, hosting Atlas probes and anchors, and keeping PeeringDB profiles clean and up to date. This was precisely the focus of the PeeringDB presentation (Livio Morina), which offered a useful reminder: peering is often unblocked thanks to the quality of information (contacts, policy, facility, updated profiles), what we might call “ecosystem hygiene.”
The Internet Society (ISOC, Hanna Kreitem) presentation rounded out the picture, noting that interconnection development projects truly succeed when they combine infrastructure, expertise, and local autonomy. This is also why, alongside the plenary sessions, some of the most valuable moments were the informal conversations among operators, during breaks and one-to-one meetings.
The closing workshop on BGP security (RPKI, ASPA, MANRS), led by Antonio Prado, wrapped up the day with a practical focus on how to make the ecosystem not only more interconnected, but also more robust. And perhaps this is the most useful takeaway from the ANIX Meeting 2026: harmonizing digital cooperation means growing rules, infrastructure, data, and expertise together, so that regional cooperation stops being an abstract goal and becomes an operational practice.
After the ANIX meeting: Namex’s Mediterranean ambitions
Namex maintains strong relationships with several IXPs in the Balkan region. In addition to our close ties with ANIX, we have a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ixp.mk (North Macedonia) and a close working relationship with KOSIX (Kosovo), with whom we have just completed an infrastructure improvement project funded by the Internet Society Foundation. Along with a new generator, we have procured a pair of servers for IXP services (IXP Manager, route server, AS112, etc.), whose installation and configuration have just been completed.
Other initiatives with additional Mediterranean countries are in the pipeline: stay tuned for announcements in the coming weeks and future newsletter editions.
— By Daniele Arena, Peering developer at Namex
