How far can you go with IX Route Servers only?

An investigation into how much internet reachability a network can achieve using only IX route servers, with no transit or bilateral peering. Using bgp.tools data across 100+ exchanges, outbound reachability reaches ~57% of IPv4 prefixes and ~61% of IPv6 prefixes, but inbound reachability drops to only ~14% of the routing table. The analysis reveals diminishing returns after the top 5 exchanges, highlights that few networks actually import routes from route servers compared to those exporting to them, and concludes that for inbound-heavy networks, Private Network Interconnects (PNIs) to major content networks are more economical than relying on IX route servers.