If we are talking Europe, I think the key here is to consider where the traffic comes from and who has good connectivity to that audience. Belnet is an educational network; so it will be able to provide the best connectivity to the Belgian educational users (approx 500,000 users); and connectivity to other networks via BNIX which is generally used by networks in the Benelux countries. Outside of this it is going to be slower. And I would expect they would want a cap on their external connectivity - they are using Cable & Wireless and Cogent amongst others. The dutch NGO, I cannot comment on but again this seems very Benelux centric; I think it is important to consider where the primary hotspots of traffic are: - UK - Germany - Sweden - Nederlands If you study each NAP across Europe; you will see that the largest in terms of traffic is LINX (London). If you then look at the participants on that NAP you will then see that its not UK centric but a number of US, UK, German, Dutch and Scandinavian networks are connected there. If you equate this back in terms of number of users then this one NAP alone gives you many millions of users; and the majority of tier 1 networks across Europe. Then looking at the German market; most of the traffic/users are on Deutsche Telecom's network, they also have multiple interconnects with LINX. The tier-1 German networks are also well connected internationally. In Sweden you have a different situation; the majority of traffic (general not Wikipedia specific) I have measured seems to remain within the region (SE/NO/DK/FI). This also seems to be how Bredbandsbolaget (main broadband provider) seems to have dimensioned their network. This could also be down to language - the Swedish/Norwegian/Danish language is similar enough for their neighbors content to be of interest to them as well. Statistics ---------- Population Users Germany 82726188 46312662 UK 59889407 35179141 Italy 58608565 28610000 France 60293927 24848009 Spain 43435136 14590180 Netherlands 16316019 10806328 Poland 38133891 10600000 Sweden 9043990 6656716 Belgium 10443012 5100000 Austria 8163782 4630000 Greece 11212468 3800000 Denmark 5411596 3720000 Portugal 10463170 3600000 Czech 10230271 3530000 Finland 5246920 3260000 Hungary 10083477 3050000 Ireland 4027303 2060000 Slovakia 5379455 1820000 Latvia 2306489 936000 Slovenia 1956916 800000 Lithuania 3430836 695000 Estonia 1344840 621000 Cyprus 950947 250000 Luxembourg 455581 170000 Malta 384594 120000 In terms of Penetration: Population Users Sweden 9043990 6656716 Denmark 5411596 3720000 Netherlands 16316019 10806328 Finland 5246920 3260000 UK 59889407 35179141 Austria 8163782 4630000 Germany 82726188 46312662 Ireland 4027303 2060000 Italy 58608565 28610000 Belgium 10443012 5100000 Estonia 1344840 621000 France 60293927 24848009 Slovenia 1956916 800000 Latvia 2306489 936000 Luxembourg 455581 170000 Czech 10230271 3530000 Portugal 10463170 3600000 Greece 11212468 3800000 Slovakia 5379455 1820000 Spain 43435136 14590180 Malta 384594 120000 Hungary 10083477 3050000 Poland 38133891 10600000 Cyprus 950947 250000 Lithuania 3430836 695000 Assuming that the demand of Wikipedia content is the similar in terms of percentage of population (its not but I do not have any figures to comment on that yet), I would strongly consider the following first: UK: LINX and XchangePoint. This will give access to all the tier 1 networks in Europe http://green.linx.net/cgi-bin/peering_matrix2.cgi Sweden: DGIX. This will give access to all the tier 1/2 networks in Scandinavia. http://www.netnod.se/connected.htm If anyone has any details traffic analysis for Europe or would like to set one up, please let me know. //Eden