Colocation and interconnection provider Telx is formally unveiling its Ethernet Exchange platform today at its CBX event. Over the next nine months, the company will open interconnection points in seven datacenters nationwide, with the first customers as part of a charter program in the third quarter. The first locations will be
111 8th Avenue and 60 Hudson Street in New York as well as its Atlanta and San Francisco locations.
Key to notice, however, is a parallel announcement, in which Telx is placing its own Ethernet Exchange in alliance with that of tndm. The two will build compatible exchange systems off of the unified exchange fabric, i.e. they will both be basing it on the Cisco ASR 9000 router and software, and they will interconnect the two exchanges. Thus Telx’s seven planned facilities will be joined by Neutral Tandem’s 14, for 21 nodes in all. Seems like a sensible plan to me, safety in numbers and all that.
This partnership helps both companies achieve scale faster and thus could allow them to keep pace with early bird CENX as well as Equinix’s effort. On the other hand, there are more moving parts and therefore the two will have to coordinate well to make it happen. If it proves workable, might other smaller providers join Telx and Neutral Tandem rather than go their own way? Or might it even come to pass that they all find a way to interconnect somehow?
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Further details: according to an 8-K, Neutral Tandem will be managing the equipment and software for both companies. http://biz.yahoo.com/e/100603/tndm8-k.html
Hi Rob. All.
Is anyone here beginning to see a developing irony in all of this? The very nature of an electronic communications exchange that employs open interconnection standards, be it based on IP, Ethernet or PSTN, is to facilitate hand-offs between different providers using those same interconnection standards in the first place. Isn’t it a bit odd that, on the one hand, the “network effect” is being enhanced through pockets of provider organizations that enter consortia, but at the same time the larger network effect is being hindered through exclusion?
To further highlight this conundrum, some exchanges are prominently incorporating descriptors like “neutral” and “open” in their names and in their brochureware. But, isn’t the main idea behind why the Metro Ethernet Forum was conceived in the first place?
Think about the original four NAPs, for example, one of which was the original “metropolitan are ETHERNET “, despite the phrase MAE (as in MAEs East and West) later changing arbitrarily to mean “metro area EXCHANGE.”
So, how much time do you give these seemingly sovereign Ethernet fabrics, or federations, before they follow in the footsteps of PSTNs, Frame Relay Nets, IP-based Internets everywhere and decide to “just all get along”?
frank@fttx.org
——
When Equinix approached us, I was very clear that the only way that I would buy their “enabler of Ethernet services” pitch was if they interconnected for free with the other exchanges. Still waiting…
Did you do the same with CENX?
Of course.
That was so good to listen about Telx Unveils Ethernet Exchange, Allies With Neutral Tandem.