Quad Cities Internet Exchange — Iowa's Peering Hub
QCIX is Iowa's largest internet exchange. Rural ISPs and network operators across Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin peer here to cut transit costs and avoid routing traffic through Chicago.
What is QCIX
For years, ISPs in Iowa and the surrounding region had no good option for local traffic exchange. Traffic between networks in Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois had to travel to Chicago — adding latency, cost, and congestion — simply because there was nowhere closer to hand it off.
QCIX was founded in 2020 by Jay Hanke of South Front Networks to fix that. As a non-profit internet exchange, QCIX gives Iowa-based and regional network operators a place to peer directly with each other and with major content networks — keeping traffic local, reducing round-trip times, and cutting upstream transit spend.
Today, QCIX is the largest internet exchange in Iowa, with switch locations in Davenport, Waterloo, Bettendorf, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and Chicago, and a growing peer list that includes Netflix, Meta, Akamai, Hurricane Electric, and dozens of Midwest ISPs.
Peer directly with content networks and ISPs instead of paying upstream transit for every byte. Major CDNs like Netflix and Akamai are already on-fabric.
Traffic between Iowa networks no longer needs to travel to Chicago and back. Local exchange means shorter paths and better performance for your end users.
QCIX was specifically designed to serve the ISP community in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin — a region that lacked a local exchange for far too long.
Connecting at the primary Davenport switch carries no port fees — only standard data center cross-connect charges apply. Low barrier, high value.
Switch Locations
QCIX operates a distributed fabric with switch presence at six facilities. The main switch is in Davenport, Iowa, with remote switches extending the exchange's reach into central Iowa, northern Iowa, the Twin Cities, and Chicago.
Peer List
Peering at QCIX means direct access to major content delivery networks that account for a large share of residential broadband traffic — without paying transit for every byte. The full peer list is available on PeeringDB.
Full peer list and open peering policies: PeeringDB · QCIX | Live traffic stats
How to Connect
QCIX is a non-profit exchange with no commercial terms and no port fees at the primary Davenport location. Route servers require IRR records to accept prefixes, and RPKI invalids are dropped. Here's what connecting looks like:
Make sure your network has an up-to-date entry on PeeringDB, including your AS-SET. Route servers will not accept prefixes that aren't registered.
Ensure your prefixes are registered in an Internet Routing Registry (IRR). RPKI ROAs are used for validation — make sure your ROAs are current and correct.
Decide which switch location makes sense for your network. The primary Davenport switch has no port fees. Remote switches at Waterloo, Bettendorf, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and Chicago may have facility-determined port fees.
Reach out to Jay Hanke at peering@qcix.net or call 612-204-0000. Load your AS-SET in PeeringDB before requesting a connection.
Peer with the route server at 206.83.43.1 (AS397806). Sessions are passive. See the route server documentation for full filtering policy details.
Join Iowa's largest internet exchange and start keeping Midwest traffic in the Midwest.
Get in touch peering@qcix.net · 612-204-0000