The MAE (later, MAE-East ) was the first Internet Exchange Point (IXP). It began in 1992 with four locations in Washington, D.C. , quickly extended to Vienna , Reston , and Ashburn, Virginia ; and then subsequently to New York and Miami . Its name stood for "Metropolitan Area Ethernet," and was subsequently backronymed to "Metropolitan Area Exchange, East" upon the establishment of MAE-West in 1994. The MAE predated the National Information Infrastructure plan, which called for the establishment of IXPs throughout the United States. Although it initially had no single central nexus, one eventually formed in the underground parking garage of an office building in Vienna, VA.
12-461: MAE-East was originally created in 1992, primarily by Scott Yeager of Metropolitan Fiber Systems (MFS) and Rick Adams of UUNET . "A group of network providers in the Virginia area got together over beer one night and decided to connect their networks", said principal MAE-East architect Steven Feldman (MFS). The founding networks were AlterNet (UUNET's backbone service), PSINet and Sprint-ICM . MFS
24-495: A multi-lateral peering policy or agreement , so each participant was responsible for independently negotiating their own bilateral peering agreements. There was also no mandatory peering requirement, so no ISP was required to peer with any other. In 1993, the National Science Foundation awarded MFS/MAE-East a grant establishing it as one of the four original Network Access Points , or NAPs. MAE-East then established
36-549: A collocation facility at 1919 Gallows Road in Vienna, in a cinder-block room in the underground P1 parking garage. The MAE upgraded to switched Ethernet and shared FDDI in Fall 1994, growing to seven DEC GigaSwitches . FDDI ports were available at 8100 Boone Blvd (in the MFS offices across the road from Gallows Road), 1919 Gallows Road, and a number of private customer POPs . The GigaSwitch access
48-460: A nearby Internet exchange built on gigabit Ethernet. Metropolitan Fiber Systems MFS Communications Company, Inc. (Metropolitan Fiber Systems) was a competitive local exchange carrier that owned and operated local network access facilities installed in and around major U.S. cities and several major European cities. MFS also possessed significant transmission and switching facilities and network capacity that it leased from other carriers in
60-481: The United States and Western Europe. The company was founded in 1988 as Kiewit Communications, a subsidiary of Kiewit Corporation . By 1991, the company owned fiber-optic lines that serve large business customers in 11 cities. In 1993, the company became a public company via an initial public offering . In April 1996, the company announced the acquisition of UUNET . In August 1996, WorldCom announced
72-801: The acquisition of the company and the transaction was completed in December 1996. Worldcom filed bankruptcy in 2002. Level 3 Communications and NorthPoint Communications were founded by former executives of MFS. NorthPoint Communications NorthPoint Communications Group, Inc. was a competitive local exchange carrier focused on data transmission via digital subscriber lines . The company had relationships with Microsoft , Tandy Corporation , Intel , Verio , Cable & Wireless , Frontier Corporation , Concentric Network , ICG Communications , Enron , Network Plus , and Netopia . The company had investments from The Carlyle Group , Accel Partners , Benchmark , and Greylock Partners . The company
84-441: The company and merge the companies' DSL businesses. In November 2000, as its customers failed to pay their bills, NorthPoint restated downwards its financial performance for the third quarter of 2000, lowering revenue from $ 30 million to $ 24 million. After the earnings restatement, Verizon terminated its acquisition agreement, claiming that a material adverse change had occurred. Northpoint sued Verizon to force it to complete
96-476: The transaction. The lawsuit was settled out of court in July 2002, with Verizon agreeing to pay $ 175 million to Northpoint. NorthPoint stated that "it would cut its workforce by 19%, or 248 jobs, to lower expenses after the collapse of its merger with Verizon." In January 2001, NorthPoint filed bankruptcy . Some internet service providers, which faced a disruption in service, blamed the banks for failing to work out
108-476: Was conceived of as a solution to some problems in which a single connected network could spread to affect the entire exchange. Frame Relay Access was added in 2002-2003 (155 mbps-2.5 gbps). In 2003, MAE-East ATM/Frame facilities were located at Boone Blvd, Sunrise Blvd, Tyco Road and Ashburn VA. By the time it closed down in 2009, many of the ISPs previously connected to MAE-East had moved to Equinix Ashburn ,
120-404: Was founded in 1997 by Michael W. Malaga and 5 other former executives of Metropolitan Fiber Systems . On May 5, 1999, during the dot-com bubble , the company became a public company via an initial public offering in which it sold 15 million shares at $ 24 per share. Malaga, then 34 years old, was worth $ 300 million on paper. In September 2000, Verizon agreed to acquire a 55% interest in
132-545: Was limited to 100 Mbps, suffered from head-of-line blocking , reached scaling limits, and began to suffer outages . MAE-East FDDI was closed to new customers after 1998 and was shut down in February 2001. MAE-East ATM was intended to be a successor to the FDDI. MAE-East ATM was trialed in 1997 and went into production in 1998. ATM allowed for higher-speed access (e.g. 155mbps - 622mbps ) and Private Virtual Connections (PVCs), which
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#1733093947479144-523: Was the service provider offering metropolitan fiber, cross connects and switch ports for the ISPs to interconnect. MAE-East was modeled after FIX East and Fix West . It was established as a Distributed Layer 2 exchange (shared 10-Mbps Ethernet over FOIRL ). By February 1993, the 10-Mbps metropolitan Ethernet connected the Sprint POP (ICMnet and AlterNet), College Park POP (AlterNet and NSFNet), MCI POP (SURAnet), and WillTel POP (PSINet). The MAE did not have
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