Equinix sends data centre tendrils north, south
The company's Sydney hub currently provides data centre services to companies like Hostworks and gaming giant Electronic Arts, but also uses a so-called 'peering fabric' to allow telcos like Unwired, Pacific Internet, Internode, Uecomm, Etherwave, IPAccess and Qwest to connect their networks together.
"We're extending that platform down to Melbourne and Brisbane," the company's managing director Doug Oates told ZDNet Australia yesterday. The links will be provided by carrier Nextgen Networks.
"So any ISP or content provider that wants to connect into our peering switch in Brisbane or in Melbourne, will have access to all the routes sitting in Sydney."
Oates said the advantage peering offered Internet service providers was dual; firstly it saved them costs by keeping some network traffic between ISPs as opposed to going out onto Internet on-ramps provided by larger carriers like Telstra and Optus.
Secondly, by avoiding those larger connections, ISPs could see speed gains, he claimed.
"They just drag in an Ethernet connection across the floor, as opposed to something across town, which is going to cost them a lot more."
The managing director said his company's data centre was much more complex these days than it was back when it opened its doors back in 2001.
"Back in 2001 the main customers we had were the main telcos, Telstra and Optus with their fibre," he said.
"And then as we moved into 2002, we saw the ISPs and the second-tier network providers come in."
"As we moved into 2003, we started seeing a lot of content organisations, people like Yahoo, Electronic Arts, Hostworks, that style of customer, as well as the traditional enterprise customers coming in as well."
He added in the last couple of years Equinix had even started to see certain industry verticals taking advantage of its services -- for example the airline industry which keeps several reservation systems at the Sydney data centre.
"Once you have one in there you typically attract another one because it's cheaper for them to interconnect," he said.
"In the United States we had one vertical in Chicago that was all around stockbroking companies."