In this Article

•    Series Introduction
•    Then
•    Now
•    Boston's Facilities, Exchanges and Networks

Boston

Then

In the original 2004 Boston Meet Me In series article there were three sites featured. 1 Summer St, 230 Congress St and 74 West St in Waltham, MA. It’s worth a read if you’re interested in the history of this series, but more so the history of carrier-neutral interconnection in Boston, What is very interesting is that two of the three sites are not currently represented as active interconnection sites with an Internet Exchange present, as per the research. 230 Congress was originally a Western Union building, as many carrier hotels were, but was unfortunately stranded by The Big Dig, the massive highway project in Boston, that cut off conduit access to the building. 74 West in Waltham was a Switch & Data site, now Equinix, and although there are 3 ASNs listed, it lacks an IX.

Read the original 2004 article

Now

1 Summer St still ranks as number 2 in Boston, but it has been supplanted by 70 Innerbelt Road as the largest neutral interconnection facility, by ASNs, in Boston. This is due in larger part to the creation of the MASS-IX, which is now the largest Internet Exchange in Boston, having passed the Boston IX in size. Both IX’s were built by James Jun of Towardex. In addition to building those IX’s, James and team at Towardex have also launched the Hub Express System (HEX), which is basically a Meet-Me in the street. The “HEX” has certainly put a spell on network-neutral, physical layer interconnection in Boston.

“What is significant about the HEX duct system is that it is the nation's (or perhaps potentially the world's) first underground utility system that is dedicated to facilitating interconnections between networks out in the street, free of any interference from landlords (such as tethering restrictions or denial of colocation service to restrict competition, discriminatory pricing, and so forth), and free of recurring cross connect costs.

Not only can networks openly license conduits and run fiber cables for a low publicized fee of $1.54/ft/year, networks can also optionally participate in a manhole-to-manhole transport service called the Fiber Optic Exchange, the first of its kind to be offered by any underground utility system. Through the Fiber Optic Exchange, members can request dark fiber in the form of ribbons (12 strands each) to facilitate inter-party cross connects between any manholes across the HEX network, eliminating the need to license duct space and install new cables. This significantly cuts down on labor and material costs for networks to make cross connects between each other.

We’ve evolved the ‘Meet-Me Hole’ concept into the ‘Meet-Me Street’—an underground cross connect fabric of interconnected manholes. This innovation allows networks to seamlessly and easily reach every other network in the duct system, eliminating the need to install splice enclosures and cable into another manhole to organize an interconnection. This also greatly reduces manhole congestion and clutter and significantly increases economies of scale for supporting cross connects between many parties across the conduit system.”

– Gavin Schoch, TOWARDEX Technologies, Inc.

 

“In order for the internet infrastructure to truly thrive in a market, a neutral meeting point for interconnections that is both carrier and data center neutral is required. To see this vision through to reality in Boston, we developed both the MASS IX exchange and the HEX conduit system to attack this challenge head-on, at both the network and physical layers of the equation.

MASS IX offers a neutral distributed peering fabric to network providers and all of the major data centers in our region. On the other hand, HEX guarantees ‘assured access’ to fibers at the physical infrastructure layer, ensuring interconnection freedom and freedom of enterprise for internet networks.

By operating the country’s first highly scalable interconnected manhole fabric beneath the streets, HEX has made Meet-Me in the street not only possible but scalable and easy-to-use to offer a viable and competitive interconnection option for networks with no recurring cross connect fees.”

– James Jun, TOWARDEX Technologies, Inc.

 

"TOWARDEX’s Gavin Schoch provides an excellent explanation of the HEX duct system- the next evolution in Meet Me Space.  I’m sure that what used to be called carrier hotels will continue to be an important element of the networks, but I am overjoyed to see an alternative.  A lot of legacy carrier hotels/MMRs are built in wholly unsuitable buildings as they landed there by happenstance, rather than by design.  This often results in the building having a constant lack of access, internal pathway and power, not to mention parking!  Despite this many landlords exact a premium price on network providers for anything and everything they can.  Now I am aware of HEX, it seems obvious that a good place to connect fiber is in the street because that is where it is – rather than pay to haul it to the 5th floor of a downtown office building.  With lower costs and lower latency, TOWARDEX’s HEX and Meet Me Street systems that follow will revolutionize the networks."

– Guy Ashton, Amesbury Consulting

Boston Internet Exchanges

The data tables below display live data on all IXs in the region outlined in this map image.

Boston - Internet Exchanges by Location Address

Boston - Networks by Internet Exchange

Networks (ASN’s) are listed as “accessible” via an IX. Accessibility is on a VLAN basis. This does not imply that the networks are physically present in the Facility. To know if a network accessible on an IX is also physically present in the same Facility as the IX, see the "AS Network Accessibility by Facility" table below this table.

Boston - AS Network Accessibility by Facility