MAE-West was an Internet exchange point located on the west coast of the United States in Silicon Valley, in the South San Francisco Bay Area in California. It was established in November, 1994. [1] Its name officially stands for "Metropolitan Area Exchange, West", although it was a humorous reference to the name of the actress Mae West and to the original MAE in the Washington DC metro area, which was thereafter known as "MAE-East."
The exchange was a dual Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) ring, bridged between two locations, one in downtown San Jose, operated by Metropolitan Fiber Systems (MFS) and catering principally to smaller networks, and the second operated by NASA at Moffett Field, 12 miles (19 km) to the northwest, and catering principally to larger networks, since it had annual terms (rather than the monthly terms and service level agreement available at the MFS location) and more restrictive access policies. The MFS side was constructed by Steven Feldman, and the NASA side by Bobby Cates and Lance Tatman. [2]
Its San Jose facility was housed in the Market Post Tower. [3] Built in 1985, Market Post Tower, also known as the Gold Building, is a 15-story building located at 55 South Market at the corner Post Street in downtown San Jose, California.
According to its website, “MAE West is interconnected with the Ames Internet Exchange, operated by NASA at the Ames Research Center. This connection is currently two OC3c circuits directly between the FDDI switches at each end.” [4]
In the 1990s, MAE-West was operated by MCI Worldcom and was the second-busiest exchange point on the internet, handling, by some estimates, as much as 40% of the nation's Internet traffic. [5]
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley. San Jose is Silicon Valley's largest city, the third-largest in California, and the 12th-most populous in the United States. Other major Silicon Valley cities include Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Cupertino. The San Jose Metropolitan Area has the third-highest GDP per capita in the world, according to the Brookings Institution, and, as of June 2021, has the highest percentage of homes valued at $1 million or more in the United States.
Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) is a standard for data transmission in a local area network. It uses optical fiber as its standard underlying physical medium, although it was also later specified to use copper cable, in which case it may be called CDDI, standardized as TP-PMD, also referred to as TP-DDI.
A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a computer network that interconnects users with computer resources in a geographic region of the size of a metropolitan area. The term MAN is applied to the interconnection of local area networks (LANs) in a city into a single larger network which may then also offer efficient connection to a wide area network. The term is also used to describe the interconnection of several LANs in a metropolitan area through the use of point-to-point connections between them.
A competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), in the United States and Canada, is a telecommunications provider company competing with other, already established carriers, generally the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC).
UUNET, founded in 1987, was one of the first and largest commercial Internet service providers and one of the early Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia. Today, UUNET is an internal brand of Verizon Business.
Internet exchange points are common grounds of IP networking, allowing participant Internet service providers (ISPs) to exchange data destined for their respective networks. IXPs are generally located at places with preexisting connections to multiple distinct networks, i.e., datacenters, and operate physical infrastructure (switches) to connect their participants. Organizationally, most IXPs are each independent not-for-profit associations of their constituent participating networks. The primary alternative to IXPs is private peering, where ISPs directly connect their networks to each other.
Downtown San Jose is the central business district of San Jose, California. Downtown is one of the largest tech clusters in Silicon Valley, as well as the cultural and political center of San Jose.
The MAE 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.
A meet-me room (MMR) is a place within a colocation center where telecommunications companies can physically connect to one another and exchange data without incurring local loop fees. Services provided across connections in an MMR may be voice circuits, data circuits, or Internet Protocol traffic.
Tower 55 is a 15-story building at the corner of South Market Street and Post Street in downtown San Jose, California. Built in 1985 as the Market Post Tower, it was designed to provide a mix of office and retail space. When first built, the building was controversial due to its gold-colored glass exterior, which produced high light and heat reflection. In its early years, the owners struggled financially with the property and were forced to put it up for sale in 1987. While the intended tenants did not materialize, the building proved popular with telecom carriers as an Internet exchange center, with MAE-West on the 13th floor, one of the oldest and most well known Internet exchanges. Many carriers maintain collocation space in the building to support their interconnections through MAE-West as well as direct interconnections.
San Jose Diridon station is the central passenger rail depot for San Jose, California. It also serves as a major intermodal transit center for Santa Clara County and Silicon Valley. The station is named after former Santa Clara County Supervisor Rod Diridon.
The media in the San Francisco Bay Area has historically focused on San Francisco but also includes two other major media centers, Oakland and San Jose. The Federal Communications Commission, Nielsen Media Research, and other similar media organizations treat the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose Area as one entire media market. The region hosts to one of the oldest radio stations in the United States still in existence, KCBS (AM) (740 kHz), founded by engineer Charles Herrold in 1909. As the home of Silicon Valley, the Bay Area is also a technologically advanced and innovative region, with many companies involved with Internet media or influential websites.
San José City Hall is the seat of the municipal government of San Jose, California. Located in Downtown San Jose, it was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier in a Postmodern style. It consists of an 18-story tower, an iconic glass rotunda, and a city council chamber wing, laid out within a two-block-long public square known as San José Civic Plaza. The tower rises 285 feet (87 m) above the plaza, making it the fourth tallest building in San Jose.
Dan Pulcrano is a journalist, editor, publisher and newspaper group owner in Northern California. He is CEO and executive editor of Metro Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley's alternative newsweekly, as well as its sister publications around the Bay Area; Good Times, the North Bay Bohemian and the Pacific Sun and East Bay Express. The group also publishes ten community newspapers, as well as magazines and related digital titles.
NASA Research Park is a research park operated by NASA near San Jose, California, which is developing a shared-use research and development campus in association with government entities, academia, industry and nonprofit organizations. NASA Research Park was approved by NASA in the fall of 2002 and had been active since then.
Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259, as of the 2020 census. Santa Clara County and neighboring San Benito County together form the U.S. Census Bureau's San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara metropolitan statistical area, which is part of the larger San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area. Santa Clara is the most populous county in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Northern California. The county seat and largest city is San Jose; with about 1,000,000 residents, it is the 10th-most populous city in the United States, California's third-most populous city and the most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area. The second- and third-largest cities are Sunnyvale and Santa Clara.
The Makati Central Business District is a financial and central business district in the Philippines located in the heart of Makati in Metro Manila. It is politically known as "Central Cluster" in the West District of Makati. It is different from the Makati civic center known as "Makati Poblacion" which is situated at the northeast portion of the district. It is bounded by EDSA, Gil Puyat Avenue, Arnaiz Avenue, and Chino Roces Avenue. The whole district occupies barangays of San Antonio, San Lorenzo, Bel-Air, and Urdaneta.
Cologix, a network neutral interconnection and data center company, runs 40+ interconnection locations across 11 North American markets. The edge markets that Cologix operates in are: Columbus, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Jacksonville, Florida; Lakeland, Florida; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Montreal, Quebec; Silicon Valley, California; Toronto, Ontario; Northern New Jersey; and Vancouver, British Columbia. The company supports five Internet exchanges.
Silicon Valley, a region located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, is one of the most expensive regions to live in the United States, and many residents lack access to affordable housing. In 2018, the median home price across the area was $1.18 million, the highest of the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S. The growth of the technology industry in the area, including major companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple, is frequently cited as a major cause of the issue. There have been local efforts to address affordable housing, as well as state measures in response to housing issues across California.