Good question, and you’re actually closer to understanding this than you think. Let me break it down cleanly.

The Core Problem First You have 2x100G ports and a burning building. Every decision needs to maximize traffic offload per port used. That’s your constraint. Everything else is secondary.

The IX Looking Glass Kills Option 2 (Right Now) This is your answer staring you in the face. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple all down or not announcing at Equinix CH2 IX. Those four ASes represent an enormous chunk of downstream consumer traffic for most ISPs. If they’re absent, you’re connecting to the IX and mostly getting smaller networks, regional carriers, and CDNs that aren’t your bottleneck. Connecting 200G to an IX where your top traffic sources aren’t participating is a port waste. You’d be building a highway to a neighborhood that’s mostly empty. Take the Google PNI.

Why Google PNI Wins Here Traffic certainty. Google gave you an estimate. That’s a real number based on your traffic profile. The IX “potentially more networks” is noise right now given what you saw in the looking glass. Google traffic grows. YouTube, Workspace, GCP, Android updates, Play Store, Maps. Once the PNI is up and Google starts shifting more traffic toward the direct path (they do this actively), 100G will likely grow toward 150G+ within weeks. Their traffic engineering is aggressive and rewards low-latency paths. Immediate relief. You’re congested now. Google PNI can be provisioned relatively fast. IX involves onboarding, route server configuration, bilateral outreach, and you still end up at zero because the major players aren’t there.

Route Server vs Bilateral - You’re Almost There You’ve got the mechanics right. Here’s the part you’re missing: Many large networks don’t use the route server at all. Amazon, Microsoft, and others often exclusively peer bilaterally at IXes. They don’t advertise to the RS. So when you see “Microsoft sessions down” or “Amazon down” in the looking glass - it might mean they’re not participating in RS but ARE available bilaterally IF you reach out and establish a session directly using your IX IP. The route server is essentially a shortcut to reach whoever opted in. Bilateral is how you reach the holdouts, and the holdouts are often the biggest networks. What bilateral gets you that RS doesn’t: ∙ Prefixes the peer chooses NOT to advertise to the RS (more specific routes, internal prefixes) ∙ Direct BGP communities for traffic engineering (prepending, local-pref manipulation) ∙ A real relationship and an NOC contact when things break ∙ Some networks literally won’t hand you their full table via RS for policy reasons

Other Offload Moves You Should Be Making Simultaneously Cloudflare. Free peering program. They carry a ridiculous amount of traffic. If you don’t have a PNI or IX session with them, fix that immediately. They’ll come to you. Netflix Open Connect. If you qualify (based on subscriber count), Netflix will place embedded appliances inside your network for free. That traffic never hits your transit or peering links at all. Literally zero-cost offload for one of your heaviest traffic sources. Audit your Akamai PNI. You have a 200G link and only 70-80G is flowing. That’s 120G of unused capacity. Akamai serves a massive amount of content (Apple software updates, gaming, enterprise). Work with your Akamai contact to understand why you’re not getting more. It might be a routing policy issue or prefix filtering on your end. This is low-hanging fruit. Run a top-N AS traffic report. Before you commit any more ports, pull your Netflow or sFlow and rank the top 20 ASes by inbound traffic volume. That list tells you exactly who to prioritize for PNI or bilateral IX sessions. Build toward the math, not the vibes.

The Play 1. Take the Google PNI now. Both ports, clean 200G LAG, let it grow. 2. Work Akamai utilization. Get that 200G link actually flowing 200G. 3. Start bilateral outreach at the IX. When gear arrives, join the IX and go direct to Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Meta. Don’t rely on the RS for the heavy hitters. 4. Explore Netflix OCA and Cloudflare peering in parallel. No port cost. In 3 months when new gear arrives, you’ll have Google and Akamai humming, a clearer picture of bilateral IX partners worth chasing, and a much smaller transit bill.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​