MCI revamps peering

MCI today announced "virtual" peering into its network, allowing its ISP customers to set up peering connections with one another without being co-located in the same data center.

Called MAE Extended Services, the new peering product links together MCI’s famously monikered regional switching facilities--MAE East, MAE Central and MAE West--using its UUNet backbone. Through new Tellabs switches installed in every data center, all peering customers can connect with peering ports of customers located in a facility a continent away. In addition to the advantages of creating peering relationships with customers in different regions without leasing transport, customers can use the peering abilities to create dedicated connections between networks separated geographically, said Joe Ferrer, product manager for MAE services.

"In the case where a customer has a port at two facilities, say MAE East and MAE West, they’ll see their own port across the network," Ferrer said. "In essence there’s nothing to prevent them from peering with themselves and establishing a layer 2 VPN between regions."

MCI plans on marketing the new services (starting at $2500 a month for an OC3 or GigE port) to regional ISPs, MSOs, enterprises, and the government and educational vertical markets. Ferrer said he believes the value of only having one physical peering location will be obvious to these types of companies and institutions, which have to connect to other networks in disparate parts of the country. MCI will pair the services up with its dedicated Internet access services and also offer transit to customers to get to its facilities.

Initially, MCI is launching the service in the U.S., but plans to launch internationally. Ferrer said MCI is estimating a Q2 2005 launch for its facilities in Frankfurt and Paris and is now in discussions with its customers about a similar launch in Asia.