Establishment of Alternative Interconnection Model in Chicago Metropolitan Area
CHICAGO – October 7, 2014 – AMS-IX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange) announces that its U.S. subsidiary, AMS-IX USA Inc., has partnered with CME Group, the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, to open the first Point of Presence (PoP) of AMS-IX Chicago in Chicago, IL. Located in the CME Group Cermak Hosting Facility at 350 E. Cermak in Chicago, this Internet Exchange builds on the successful and proven business model of AMS-IX in Amsterdam which, with almost 700 connected parties and a peak Internet traffic rate of more than 3 Tb/s, is currently the world’s largest Internet connectivity hub.
AMS-IX Chicago is the third deployment of AMS-IX USA Inc., following on from AMS-IX New York and AMS-IX Bay Area. It brings an affordable, neutral, and distributed Internet Exchange model to the Chicago area, delivering the interconnection market in this region enormous value by decreasing complexity and associated costs. The distributed model makes it possible for connected parties of AMS-IX Chicago in one data center to exchange traffic with connected parties in another data center. AMS-IX is working on an additional PoP for AMS-IX Chicago with another data center provider. The second regional PoP is expected to go live in the beginning of 2015.
By deploying an Internet Exchange in the CME Cermak hosting facility, this leading data center facility now offers additional peering opportunities to its customers – providing geographic diversity and improving connectivity, reach and performance to end-users. This partnership also allows companies connecting to AMS-IX Chicago’s platform the opportunity to locate and/or expand their network presence within a secure and modern interconnection facility in downtown Chicago. With the establishment of this Internet Exchange partnership, CME’s content and financial services’ clients can expect to experience reduced latency and transit costs by peering directly with AMS-IX Chicago.
AMS-IX Chicago is OIX-1 (IXP Technical Standards) compliant, the third of its U.S.-based IX platforms to uphold the association’s commitment to increase the reliability, resiliency and competitiveness of massive-scale interconnection for all.
“We bring the interconnection market in the Chicago metropolitan area a valuable alternative as this Internet Exchange aims to increase geographic diversity, simplify connectivity and reduce costs through a robust Internet infrastructure and distributed and neutral model. Furthermore, AMS-IX Chicago helps strengthen the economy in this region by attracting more business, stimulating both job growth and innovation,” explains Job Witteman, CEO of AMS-IX. “We are pleased to partner with CME Group, who provides us the opportunity to reach a new target group such as financial market participants who strongly rely on the Internet and data centers for their business to operate.”
“The relationship between AMS-IX Chicago and CME’s Cermak Hosting Facility provides collective customers of AMS-IX Chicago with the connectivity, capacity and capability to interconnect and house their critical equipment in one of the world’s premiere data centers,” says Craig Mohan, Managing Director, Co-Location and Data Center Services at CME Group. “Tenants of CME’s Cermak Hosting Facility benefit from reduced transit costs by peering directly with AMS-IX Chicago. This means they also have the ability to peer with parties that are connected to AMS-IX Chicago from another data center location.”
For more information, visit www.chi.ams-ix.net and www.cmegroup.com.
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About AMS-IX Chicago
AMS-IX Chicago is a neutral, independent and distributed Internet Exchange, offering high quality IP peering and interconnectivity services in Chicago, IL. This peering platform is the third deployment of AMS-IX USA Inc., following on from AMS-IX New York and AMS-IX Bay Area. AMS-IX Chicago is built according to AMS-IX’s successful and proven European business model and is a response to the Open-IX initiative, which was started by a group of Internet network operators, content providers and other Internet market parties. The goal is to encourage the development of the neutral and distributed Internet Exchange models and reduce IP interconnection and the associated costs in the United States.
More information about AMS-IX in Amsterdam can be found at: www.ams-ix.net.
More information about AMS-IX Chicago can be found at: www.chi.ams-ix.net.
About Open-IX Association
The Open-IX Association (OIX) is an Internet community effort to improve the landscape of Internet peering and massive-scale interconnection. OIX encourages the development of neutral and distributed Internet exchanges while promoting uniform standards of performance for interconnections backed by the Internet community. The Association aims to promote common and uniform specifications for data transfer and physical connectivity and improve overall Internet performance by developing criteria and methods of measurement to reduce the complexity that restricts massive scale interconnection in fragmented markets. The OIX Board is comprised of volunteer representatives from the Internet community, including Donald S. Clark, Dan Golding, Martin Hannigan, Keith Mitchell, David Temkin, and Barry Tishgart. More information about OIX can be found by visiting www.open-ix.org.
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