Nashville Internet Exchange To Ease Latency, Members Say

DevDigital, 365 Data Centers and Peace Communications jointly opened the Nashville Internet Exchange (NashIX) Tuesday, saying they deployed the exchange to improve Internet speeds in the Nashville area and reduce the cost of service. NashIX, which 365 is housing in its Nashville collocation facility, will reroute data that was previously routed via Atlanta, Chicago or Dallas, the companies said. Routing traffic through those cities “significantly” increased costs and resulted in additional latency, they said. Latency within a metropolitan area is typically less than two milliseconds, while latency between Atlanta and Nashville is between six and eight milliseconds, the companies said. A private 10 Gbps line from Nashville to Atlanta costs $5,000-$10,000 per month, while a Nashville area 10 Gbps connection is 30 percent of that cost, the companies said. A NashIX connection is free to entities that join the exchange before Sept. 30, the companies said. “Increasingly, content is moving from the core to the edge,” said NashIX board Chairman Peter Marcum in a news release. “With the NashIX, content will move faster and with less congestion.” The NashIX launch followed Allied Fiber CEO Hunter Newby saying Monday that company is poised to launch its own distributed Internet exchange between Miami and Atlanta, with connections to Chicago, Jacksonville and New York (see 1504060039). The Detroit Internet Exchange launched last week (see 1503310053).