In this Article

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

Series Introduction

Welcome to the next evolution of the "Meet Me In..." research series. The goal of the series has always been to educate, create awareness, and highlight key facts about where, how and why the physical networks that make up the world's information infrastructure meet.

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Then

The original series featured 56 Marietta St, the King of Carrier Hotels and network interconnection in Atlanta at the time and the main thoroughfare for Europe to LATAM traffic through the U.S. As per the research data, 56 Marietta is still reigning champion, as per the number of total ASNs present in the building, in Atlanta today. Back then, in 2003, were the days of networks measured by a physical presence alone and not ASN’s on an IX. 56 Marietta had 54 physical networks present and published at the time with up to a total of 80 as mentioned in the original research. The Atlanta Internet Exchange (AIX) existed in 56 Marietta at that time, but was not listed in the original series. On the contrary, the Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX) had a presence in 56 Marietta and was listed as a “network” present in the building.

Read the original 2003 article

Read the original 2005 article

Now

The Atlanta Internet Exchange was eventually acquired by telx, which became the Telx Internet Exchange (TIE) and is now part of Digital Realty Trust. The PAIX was acquired by Switch and Data, which was then acquired by Equinix, which is a tenant in 56 Marietta, but have announced that they will be leaving the building to consolidate in to a building more favorable to them in Atlanta, 180 Peachtree. Once again, and as the research data will prove continually, networks go to where networks already are and the same holds true for IX’s. As of this publishing, the Digital Realty Atlanta IX now has 155 ASN’s alone. The overall Atlanta interconnection scene continues to be very robust.

Atlanta Internet Exchanges

Currently there are 7 IX’s in 13 facilities within 10 addresses in Atlanta. The largest, Digital Realty Atlanta, has 155 ASN’s and the smallest, Global Peer Exchange, has 3 ASN published. The difference between the largest IX and 2nd largest, NetIX with 98 ASN’s, is 43. That is a fairly large delta making Digital Realty Atlanta the clearly dominant IX in Atlanta. These numbers change as networks move on and off of IX’s, but the general direction is typically up.

The Top 5 Networks, by number of IX’s connected to, are CloudFlare, Hurricane Electric, Akamai, Google, and Microsoft.

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

Atlanta - Internet Exchanges by Location Address

Atlanta - Networks by Internet Exchange

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