New Internet Exchanges hit the street

Equinix, a well-funded start-up, announced last week that its building 15 Internet Exchange points around the U.S.

Equinix is joining the likes of MCI WorldCom, Ameritech and Sprint who have been operating Metropolitan Area Exchange (MAE) and Network Access Points (NAP) since the Internet went commercial in 1994.

Internet Exchanges, MAEs and NAPs are essentially the same thing. They all provide a data center like environment where ISPs can swap traffic. One of the primary differences between Equinix's business plan compared to the traditional MAE and NAP providers is that the Equinix is not requiring ISPs to interconnect on its ATM network that will be built inside each Internet Exchange.

While it's a viable option for many ISPs to have a dedicated link connecting to a LAN where hundreds of other ISPs are exchanging traffic, service providers aren't forced into that model. ISPs, content providers and even large enterprise business users will be able to simply peer with one, two or twelve ISPs. Or they can solely connect to Equinix's ATM LAN.

Equinix is also touting its Internet Exchange environment as independent or "neutral" because Equinix is not a service provider. It remains to be seen if this is very important to ISPs because Equinix has not announced any customers yet. The company says that its waiting until July when its first Internet Exchange is built and ready to support customers before it will announce any of its ISP, content provider or enterprise customers. The first Internet Exchange is being built in Ashburn, Va., about 35 miles west of Washington, D.C.

Equinix's CEO Al Avery and Chief Technology Officer Jay Adelson already have knowledge of swapping Internet traffic from their former lives at the Palo Alto Internet Exchange. Up until last week Compaq owned Internet Exchange (the next newsletter will have more information on this announcement).

Equinix has been able to drum up over $12 million in investments from companies such as Cisco and Microsoft.

Denise Pappalardo is a senior editor for Network World, covering ISPs, VPNs and related topics. Reach her at denisep@nww.com.