Expansion of Growth & Peering Exchanges in Smaller Markets – That Won’t Stay Small for Long

CENTRA Attends NANOG 91

NANOG 91 is aimed at the technical and operational decision-maker audience, and also includes diverse industries such as broadband ISPs, carriers, data center facility owners and operators, Internet exchange operators, media and content distribution companies, major technology platform companies, and software and hardware vendors for the entire ecosystem. 

We’ve been coming to NANOG for about 10 years, so there are usually people we know and look forward to seeing.  Because all the talks are recorded to watch online, we focus the majority of our in-person time networking and having “hallway conversations” to connect and learn from each other. This year had 650+ in-person attendees which is an increase from NANOG 90 in Charlotte earlier this year. We hope attendee counts continue to grow towards pre-pandemic numbers.  

This year, we also attended the Midwest Peering Summit after NANOG, which is a smaller regionally focused event with about 150 attendees and took an extensive tour of the NOCIX facilities, including their newer data center with 5 MW capacity onsite, expanding to 10 MW soon. 

Here’s some highlights from our recent week in Kansas City:

• The continued expansion of and growth and peering exchanges in traditionally smaller population markets proves out of our intended market strategy for CENTRA as we further expand through 2025 (e.g., Tier 2/3)
• The rise of peering in these markets, in addition to the growth of the IX and traffic, underscores to our CENTRA tenants that traffic is rising in population areas
• The rise of peering remains a more economically viable option to paying transport costs; even with the current pricing pressure continuing to drive transit down
• One keynote focused on Digital Twinning for your infrastructure which is an important capability within the entire IT lifecycle. A digital twin allows flexibility in operating, testing, and validating infrastructure. We have a digital twin approach to our CENTRA data center models, giving customer more extensive insights into the operation inside our facilities to act as an extension of their operations
• Another talk was on IX Automation which was intriguing because it not only touched on advance IX management software, but also about advancing peering capabilities programmatically between peers

For us, at CENTRA, it was great to be in KC and get a close-up view of the importance of the Midwest with regard to peering – plus continuing to watch it grow.  If you want to discuss any of the above topics, or learn more about CENTRA exceeding your data center needs, please reach out to us here.