IX-West is a Colorado non-profit organization that strives to provide open, neutral, community oriented, and membership driven Internet, IT, and Telecommunication interconnectivity in the greater Rocky Mountain West. Our primary objective is to provide a multitude of interconnection options for all organizations throughout Colorado, and beyond.
Our first exchange, IX-Denver, was founded in the Denver Gas and Electric building in downtown Denver thanks to 910Telecom. We have since expanded to multiple locations to better serve our members. This is a major step towards a more robust, more reliable, more cost effective, and truly local Internetwork in this region.
Key Facts:
- At its core, IX-West is simply a series of Interconnection eXchanges (IXs).
- An IX is a physical infrastructure through which all participating organisations can directly interconnect their networks with each other.
- IX-Denver is the first IX-West IX, serving the Denver metro area.
- IX-West is actively seeking partners in all surrounding municipalities and communities to help build additional IXs.
- Interconnecting through an IX is typically called “Peering” and is often a lower cost & more secure alternative to buying “Transit” services from a traditional ISP.
- Modern IXs, like IX-Denver and all IX-West interconnection exchanges, offer additional value-add services such as private interconnection, layer 2 and layer 3 connectivity options, route servers, DNS root servers, and more.
- IX-West is operated in an open, neutral, and community focused manner by a Board of Directors elected by the members themselves. The business, technology, and innovation are always firmly in the hands of the “customer.”
Who Benefits from an Interconnection eXchange (IX)?
- Virtually any organization with an IT network or an Internet connection benefits.
- Some organizations are able to lower their ISP/Transit bills significantly by Peering directly with the organizations they communicate most frequently.
- Other organizations find additional security and peace of mind by Peering with partners directly to avoid sending proprietary, trade secret, and other confidential data over the open (and insecure) Internet.
- Still others benefit by bypassing Internet congestion and “choke points”, providing their users a much improved quality of experience.
- Many organizations actually fall into more than one of the categories above, thus deriving multiple benefits when joining their local IX.
- Additionally, state & local governments benefit by keeping traffic local, reducing the cost of doing businesses, and increasing the stability of our Internet.