James Jun’s Post

Recently there have been some discussions on LinkedIn about exploitative conducts by certain bad-acting data center operators in jacking up cross connect rates and punishing telecom carriers. It's unfortunate because most data centers, including those who charge for cross connects, are very reasonable and fantastic partners who want nothing more than to help their customers succeed in their respective facilities and network ecosystems. In this article, I'll discuss how utilities and street infrastructure can defeat the exploitative cross connect practices, by changing the power dynamics around network interconnection. #internet #interconnection #datacenter John A. Danko Hunter Newby Gavin Schoch John van Oppen Chris Hinkle George J Cornachini Martin Hannigan

Huge round of applause and congratulations to the GIX Fiber team on this amazing network build and accomplishment. This is a fantastic network route and we're excitedly eager to getting on your backbone to support our upcoming peering site build in NJ! Joe Falco George J Cornachini

Hope everyone had a fantastic Fourth of July! 🇺�� Kicking off the month of July, today TOWARDEX and Lightpath teams met together to collaborate and discuss new ways and more opportunities on how we can enhance high-bandwidth connectivity choice and internet performance for our mutual customers. As the operator of Boston's only open and distributed internet peering exchange (MASS IX), TOWARDEX is partnering with Lightpath to extend our peering ecosystem to more customers across the Boston metropolitan area, leveraging each other's network infrastructure.  This is one partnership that's starting to become a hard to beat combination in Boston! 🚀 👉 Recently Lightpath and TOWARDEX made history in Boston's internet infrastructure by being the first regional CLECs in the last 20 years to directly interconnect each other's IP network to enhance performance for our mutual customers.  Read about it here: https://lnkd.in/enBEYhGR I love infrastructure and networking, and I love it even more when our customers benefit from it.  However, just like with everything else, telecom is a people business, network is the product that we sell.  This is what a customer-first collaboration and network interconnection agreement looks like! 🤝 #Boston #internet #bgp #peering

It's a passionate topic of mine, and it all comes down to understanding your customers and the value you can provide as being a neutral interconnection provider that's everyone's easy button.  John A. Danko knows this very well. There is no question, protected indoor data centers are the best and easiest place for network interconnections. I've said this over and over, and I will be the first one to defend data centers as being the most fantastic and convenient place for interconnections with the best value, even with cross connect fees. The biggest drawback against data centers is trust. When a data center decides to compete with its own customers, then proceeds to harm another company by abusing its power of being a landlord, such as attempting tortious interference upon its carrier customers (i.e. "stop selling circuits to a guy I don't like, or your colo license is not renewed"), this greatly harms the reputation of the commercial real-estate (CRE) and betrays the trust for many LECs. Large utilities out in the public ROW are regulated by state PUCs.  Utility owners owning big conduit systems are often regulated common carriers under the CPCN (Certificate for Public Convenience & Necessity) principle, meaning, they're held to the same standard as public transit agencies running trains and buses.  They're not allowed to discriminate, no matter who the customer is.  The only time they can deny a cross-connect is if the customer doesn't pay their fare or is materially violating rules (i.e. working w/o a permit, violating building/safety code, stealing conduit, etc.), and even then, termination must often follow state mandated notification procedure with an opportunity for appeal. When data centers are in the business of harming other companies, the problem you now have is a trust issue.  Street interconnection is difficult, it's not the easiest place to work out of.  But, what you'll get is stability and security for your business in that no landlord can try to harm your interconnections out in the streets. The biggest selling point for TOWARDEX's Hub Express System for underground interconnections isn't even the fact that we maintain clean and nice manhole system, but it's the fact that we're regulated.  Our tenants sleep happy at night, knowing that we can't just decide someday to kick them out of our manholes just because we're competitors—it's against the law. Now, when you go to a private landlord meet-me room, you do not have these protections. Retail colo license is often "at-will" and you have no recourse as a tenant.  If the data center wants to put you out of business someday, you're done. So, I hope people understand some of the motives behind why CLECs love going out to the streets for cross connects. It's a trust issue, nothing against the data center.  Many large utilities are regulated public services—Private land owners working in internet infrastructure I'm sorry to say, are not.

The rehabilitation of HEX manhole C19BA-204 is now completed!  Over the course of 3 weeks, crews cleaned out the vault, replaced cable racking to TWDX Infrastructure's new standard specifications, and significantly enhanced waterproofing and hermetic sealing of the vault to keep it dry. 🔓 After hydrostatic head testing and facility re-certifications are completed, we will begin installing new locking security bolts. 📢 This manhole has now been re-opened for new tenant network projects.  Requests for cable attachments that were held up during the months of May & June will soon resume in the coming weeks!  Huge thanks to member utilities/telecoms for cooperating with us and coming out to oversee the project while their live cables had to be moved during the work. 💪 #TeamworkMakesTheDreamWork 📺 YouTube HD Link: https://lnkd.in/eJbrgXCn 🌐 Check out HEX system's manhole quality standard here: https://lnkd.in/eWmABway #Boston #internet #datacenter #infrastructure TOWARDEX

🕳️ The many manholes of Boston's data centers in Somerville, Massachusetts. Known as Inner Belt, the area is home to large data centers run by CoreSite and Evocative, and home to Aqua Comms' AEC-3 transatlantic cable to UK, and Amitié submarine cable consortium's inland data center site.  FirstLight Fiber's lowest latency (<15km) terrestrial fiber to the Lynn landing station also arrives here. The Inner Belt area's telecom infrastructure was recently upgraded by TOWARDEX's Hub Express System (HEX), the New England's first open-access underground utility for internet networks.  Using the HEX system, hyperscalers, CDNs, carriers, and subsea network operators interconnect together in wholesale volumes out in the streets, creating express pathways that bypass legacy carrier hotels and incumbent chokepoints. With up to 219 subducts for fiber optic cables, the Inner Belt has now become Boston's single most heavily connected neighborhood, surpassing Cambridge's Bent Street. Indeed, property values and best & highest use cases for real estate in Inner Belt are now rising, with rental rates floating at upwards of $70/SF, making it one of the most expensive industrial areas where land owners are vying for high-tech tenants such as lab space & data center developers to come in, leveraging the high-capacity telecom & power infrastructure underneath the streets. Meanwhile, the average cost of 10 Gbps DIA for abutting properties on Inner Belt is now ~$800/month, metro dark fiber rates at as low as ~$250/month from competing carriers. It's crazy that you can get these quotes from outside of a data center. 📢 There are now calls by data center developers for the HEX system to extend beyond Inner Belt to cope with rising land prices.  When we started building the HEX system and opened it up to everyone at low prices, we did so out of necessity, because we needed to interconnect with our carriers and IRU partners out in the streets. However, we never anticipated that the street infrastructure would soon contribute to rising land prices and create bidding competition between tenants trying to move in.  This is the true power of the public utility and open-access infrastructure built for the public's benefit—it creates so much competition for broadband that it actually starts to influence land values around it. 😲 🌐 About HEX system, the underground interconnection utility: https://lnkd.in/ep9wgn5M 🌐 About Fiber Optic Exchange, underground cross-connect service: https://lnkd.in/eTyQg6eu 🌐 About CoreSite BO1 data center: https://lnkd.in/eZ23BNdP 🌐 About Evocative BOS1 data center: https://lnkd.in/eKePFS8W 🌐 About AquaComms AEC-3 to UK: https://lnkd.in/eRtXtCc7 🌐 About FirstLight Lynn Landing: https://lnkd.in/ece6vMbm #internet #infrastructure #Boston #builtenvironment

Last work day of the month!  Today TOWARDEX crews finished testing & delivering 3 DIA connections, 2 E-Line ports, and a dark fiber ring for our new customers coming into Boston's data centers.   🚀 Find out why we're the most popular blended bandwidth provider in Boston: https://lnkd.in/exiCjT4Q #Boston #datacenter #bgp #as27552 #iptransit

Thank you team Lightpath for the shoutout and hosting such a great event! We greatly appreciate our partnership and look forward to continue building amazing telecommunications infrastructure & networks together for Boston! The best is yet to come! 💪💪

🚧 Entering week three (final week!) of Manhole 204 rehabilitation in the Hub Express System. Finish touches and sealing enhancements are applied to bring the communications vault to TWDX Infrastructure's latest standards. One of the conduit openings on the East Wall (E4.1 - 4.4) is a "Quad Duct" configuration, where (4) 1-1/4" PVC ducts were brought into a 4" knockout opening during the construction (with lot of concrete poured onto the duct bank to keep water out).  As part of the rehabilitation work, we needed to cleanly seal this Quad Duct from inside of the vault, but without using foam-based sealants which often create a mess if not injected carefully. To meet this challenge, we reached out to AC Cable Solutions to utilize their 𝐃𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐆 to neatly seal this Quad Duct port.  It's a brilliant kit and results in a very clean installation (looks like a neatly done firestop)—from a distance, I can't even tell that the seal is even there! 👍 🌐 Check out the Duct Seal HG kit here: https://lnkd.in/eWycTUt3 🌐 HEX System manhole quality standard: https://lnkd.in/eWmABway #Boston #internet #datacenter #infrastructure TOWARDEX Carl Pike Philip Westerman. Gavin Schoch

A huge loss for many of us in the network engineering community. RIP Kevin, and thank you for all of your kindness, talent, opportunity and help you've given to all of us in the community. We will miss you badly.