Greetings IX-Denver Community,
As a co-founder, and president of this organization, I’m going to start a new tradition of providing a recap of the past year of accomplishments along with our goals for the upcoming year. I intended to get this update out before the end of the year, but life happened and I was unable to do so.
As everyone knows 2020 was a challenging year for many at both a macro and micro level in our world. I prefer to look at it as a year of responding to changes, and doing so in a way which will make us better, and stronger. This is exactly what we did here as an organization.
2020 was not only our 5th year of operations (yay!!), it was quite possibly our most successful year to date. We’ve come a long way from a single switch deployment in 2015 to now being the largest facility neutral, community focused, and only not-for-profit interconnection platform in the region. I continue to be amazed at what a group of competent volunteers can accomplish.
So, anyway, what did we do in 2020? Well, alot.. We transitioned from a native layer 2 switching design to an IP underlay, and EVPN overlay design. This included fully automated both underlay and overlay configurations. In August we were able to tear down, physically move to a new cabinet, and rebuild our core site in a single afternoon. This rebuild was when we instituted the new designs and automations, as well as expanding our fiber capacity in the 910 Telecom MMR by 8x from our previous capacity. This work also included adding two 100g capable switches!! Most importantly, in 2020 we added 16 new peer networks: Peak Internet, South Front Networks LLC, NetActuate Inc, Hoyos Consulting LLC, Atheral LLC, Facebook, Ting Fiber, United Telephone Association Inc., Woofy, Imperva Inc., Netnod, Hamilton.net Inc., Nutrien, OneNet Global, Unitas Global, and Maverix LLC.
So, what are we going to do in 2021? Again, alot.. This will be the year of expanding our automation glue in the platform. From the member portal, to the switches that make up the fabric, to the route servers, and all the communications to peer networks and social media platforms in between. We are continuing to automate all-the-things. We of course also anticipate continued growth in the peer networks available on our fabric.
We will be holding board elections soon https://ix-denver.org/about/2021-election/ please reach out and let us know if you’d like to join us in continuing to provide the rocky mountain region with a community-focused and member-driven interconnection platform!
Regards,
Mark Calkins
Co-Founder, President