Meet Me in San Francisco

Part of a series of articles published in FATPIPE magazine from 2003-2005 examining carrier interconnection options in major North American cities. This article was published in the July 2003 issue. To download the complete series as one consolidated PDF (2.7 MB), click here.

eXchange @ 200 Paul operates on a 15-acre campus, in a building it owns and custom built, and contains 425,000 square feet of carrier hotel and data center space. It is the leading carrier hotel and "meet me room" in the San Francisco Bay Area and is 82 percent occupied. Today, some 38 carriers use eXchange, and the company expects to have 50 carriers in the building by 2004, says John Wilson, eXchange CEO.

That's significant, since "people want to be where the other people are," says Mark Hansen, director of operations.

The company also has city permission to build another 330,000 square feet of space, for a total of 750,000 square feet, says Wilson. So customers are assured the facilities are "future proof" and "stable," says Bill Wilde, company CTO. The entire facility, in fact, was built from scratch, with customer input. "Shortages of power, riser access, conduit, inter-duct and space in meet me rooms all were cited by the engineers we talked to," says Wilde. "So we started there, and everywhere we could spend $1 upfront to save customers $10 later, we did."

The company also "is strongly cash flow positive and self funding," says Wilson. That's another "stability" factor carriers should think about.

eXchange @ 200 Paul minimizes local access charges and capital costs, creating an efficient environment for both carriers and enterprises. "All the long haul carriers in the building can be reached without paying a local access charge," says Wilde. "And in case somebody isn't in the building, there are multiple Type I on-network connections available to you."

"Every metro player except maybe Comcast is inside the building, or within two blocks," says Hansen. All of that helps out the enterprise customers collocating in the building. "Even smaller collocation customers get good bandwidth prices."

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Suggestions and Feedback

As this series has developed over the past several months, I've learned many things about the different markets and have received various suggestions from readers as well.

One thing that I have learned (or I should say that has been validated) is in certain cities there are defined interconnection points that are generally known throughout the industry, while in others it is not so clear. In the cities that always had a large competitive telecom presence, the sites were for the most part defined and widely known.

There is a definite "network effect" in the interconnect business, leading carriers to collocate where their business partners already are. In the historical "major" markets, the "places to be" are widely understood. But there are many markets where this degree of carrier concentration is less developed, at least in part because there are multiple sites with the right physical attributes. In these cities, one still has to ask, "Where is the best place to be?"

In terms of reader suggestions, there have been a couple of notable requests, among them was a call to look at San Francisco as a featured market and not simply as part of the "Bay Area." I've also gotten requests for more information on multiple sites in the remaining markets to be covered: Dallas, Miami, Chicago and Philadelphia.

One thing is clear: there is a difference between "core interconnection facilities" used by carriers and "enterprise-geared collocation facilities." They generally look the same but really sit in different places in the network. The difference is really between the transport and application layers, although both play in each.

So we'll spend some additional time returning to markets we've previously covered, to look at additional sites readers asked about in those markets. If anyone has a request for the remaining markets, please email me at [email protected].

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eXchange Attributes

Attribute	Details
Building size	425,000 sq. ft. in the existing buildings. Entitlements in place for a 330,000-sq.-ft. expansion
Union building	Yes
Building generator	Yes
Generator rooms for tenants	Generator yard – entitlements and air quality district approvals for 38 generators on the site
Roof access	Yes. Roof space is available for mechanical equipment and satellite dishes and antennas.
Tenant conduit rights	Yes, negotiated on a tenant-by-tenant basis. There are pre-installed primary, secondary and tertiary data vaults and associated riser shafts in the facility.
Is there a building meet me room?	Yes
Is this MMR the featured site?	Yes. In addition to the 3rd floor 5,000-sq.-ft. carrier meet me room, the facility has a 9,245-sq.-ft. colocation facility located on the 5th floor that provides space for IP network POPs and larger Telco POPs.

Attributes of the Interconnect Facility

3rd Floor Meet Me Room

• Facility Size: 5,000 sq. ft.
• AC Power Feed: 400 amps at 480 volt
• Generator: 350 kw
• Control System: Siemens Apogee building management system
• UPS: Liebert 100 KVA
• DC Plant: Two DC plants installed with space for two future plants. Existing DC plants are 400 amp and 600 amp.
• HVAC: Liebert CRAC units (N+1 design)
• Fire Suppression: Three levels of protection provided: VESDA / FM-200 / Double Interlock Pre-Action

5th Floor Colocation Facility

• Facility Size: 9,300 sq. ft.
• AC Power Feed: 2,000 amps at 480 volt
• Generator: 1,000 kw and 2,000 kw
• Control System: Siemens Apogee building management system
• UPS: Multiple Powerware 400 KVA units
• DC Plant: Two DC plants installed with space for two future plants. Existing DC plants are 400 amp and 1,600 amp. Future space can allow for up to 3,600 amps of additional DC power.
• HVAC: Phase 1 Trane / Phase 2 Compu-Aire CRAC units (N+1 design)
• Fire Suppression: Three levels of protection provided: VESDA / FM-200 / Double Interlock Pre-Action

eXchange Interconnection Guidelines

• Can customers order cross connects to any other meet area customer? Yes
• Is the average turnaround time for cross connects 48 hours or less? Yes
• Is on-site technical support available 24/7/365? Yes
• Can customers access the site 24/7/365? Yes
• Can the technicians test and turn up circuits? Yes
• Does the meet area operator perform the cross connect? Yes
• Can the customer perform the cross connect? No
• Are all cross connects tagged and inventoried? Yes
• Is there a shared fiber panel (MDF, CFDP)? Yes
• Can the customer bring and install its own fiber distribution panels? Yes
• Is there a shared COAX or copper panel? Yes
• Can the customer bring and install its own COAX or copper panel? Yes, if it is located in the customers cabinet or cage
• Are there monthly recurring charges to cross connect in the meet area? Yes

For carriers not in the meet area, the interconnect options include: a few connections allowed directly between major tenant/carriers in the facility. These are carriers that have leased large areas in the building and located major gateways in the facility. (Note: these tenants also provide a POP in an MMR.)

There is an IDF in the 5th floor colocation facility where various IP network providers are allowed to cross connect.

The costs and availability are negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

Carriers at eXchange

AT&T • BurnaDisc • CENIC (Corp. for Educational Networks Initiative in California) • Cingular • Coastside • Cogent • Digital Wire Works • DSL Extreme • Internap • IP Networks • Level 3 • Looking Glass • MFN • Neapolitan • nLayer • Novani • NTT/Verio • OnFiber Communications (Yipes, Internap & Broadwing) • Optigate • PAIX – Palo Alto Internet Exchange • Qwest/Qwest Local • Reliable Hosting • RCN • SBC/Pacific Bell • SBC Long Distance • SMRN (San Mateo Regional Network) • Teleknex • Time Warner Telecom • Tycom • United Colocation Group • United Layer • Universal Access • Verizon • WilTel Communications • WorldCom/MFS Communications • XO Communications

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