Introduction
Introduction and History of Any2Exchange®
Welcome to the CoreSite® Any2Exchange® for internet peering. With over 20 years of operation as one of the original peering exchanges, you now belong to one of the largest and most established peering communities in the United States – joining more than 400 of the world’s leading networks, digital platforms, cloud service providers, educational and research institutions and enterprises.
Enclosed, you will find instructions on how to efficiently connect to the Any2Exchange, as well as tips on how to get the most out of what the community has to offer. Upon reading this document, you should have a clear understanding of the benefits of connecting to the Any2Exchange and the procedures we have put in place for you to easily establish peering connections that are secure, fast and reliable.
“An internet exchange point (IX or IXP) is a physical infrastructure that allows different Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to exchange internet traffic between their networks (autonomous systems) by means of mutual peering agreements, which allow traffic to be exchanged without cost.” (Wikipedia)
The CoreSite Any2Exchange for internet peering began with the above definition as its core inspiration. CoreSite, known as CRG West at the time, built the first Any2Exchange point within the One Wilshire® data center (LA1) in Los Angeles. Given the density of direct interconnection and peering within LA1, it was a natural addition to our service portfolio.
Next, we extended Any2Exchange as a distributed exchange by connecting the LA1 switch fabric to the Meet-Me Room at 55 S. Market in San Jose (SV1). The goal was simple: offer every customer increased value by way of introducing additional low-cost peering options.
Today, CoreSite’s LA1 is widely recognized as one of the most connected data centers in the world, with Any2West® receiving accolades as one of the largest peering communities of its kind in the United States. Any2Exchange is available at every CoreSite data center, offering cost-effective, high-performance peering in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Northern Virginia, the San Francisco Bay Area, Atlanta, Orlando and Washington, D.C.
We have continued to develop Any2Exchange with the objectives of offering:
1. A low-cost interconnection point where access networks, regional networks, content delivery networks and VoIP networks can easily find each other and peer.
2. A location where members can enjoy high-performance interconnection, eliminating transit networks.
3. A secondary or tertiary disaster-recovery point, where even Tier 1 and large Tier 2 networks can retain uptime in the event of a catastrophic failure of primary submarine cable, switching / routing equipment or other disruption.
The Mission of the Any2Exchange
CoreSite built Any2Exchange for the betterment of participating companies. Given the high density of both established and emerging network service providers, CoreSite made a decision to help facilitate the success of both through offering a platform that would allow a low-cost, high-performance packet exchange as a utility within our data centers.
Any2Exchange facilitates the exchange of internet traffic between Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Voice over IP (VoIP) and content providers. It is a place for network providers to interconnect and exchange IP traffic at a local or international level.
CoreSite offers companies of all shapes and sizes a utility in the Any2Exchange that reduces operating costs, increases network performance and reliability, reinforces resiliency and disaster recovery planning and enables relationships that would be impossible without the exchange. As a result, the Any2Exchange sets the field for further innovation based on availability of an expanded peer, customer and supplier community.
The Any2Exchange is a classic open internet peering point. CoreSite provides a high‑performance switch fabric, assigning participants an ARIN issued non‑routable exchange IP address. Once your Any2Exchange order has been received and processed, CoreSite will establish a connection (GigE, 10GigE, and in some markets, 100GigE) from your point of presence to the Any2Exchange switch fabric. Once your Any2Exchange connection is established, you are free to engage in a BGP-4 peering session with any other connected and consenting network. Peering relationships are private agreements between Any2Exchange participants.
In addition to classic exchange point utilities, the Any2Exchange also fully supports IPv6 throughout the exchange infrastructure, as well as reverse DNS lookup, and no cost IPv6 address support. Any2Easy route servers support more than 200 networks and have over 167,000 routes available.
A full list of participating Any2Exchange organizations can be viewed on the MyCoreSite online portal or on the CoreSite website Any2Exchange Participants List.
