MEF president launches carrier Ethernet exchange startup

After five years or so of development, Carrier Ethernet Neutral Exchange, or CENX, made its public debut today as an interconnection broker for carrier Ethernet services, helmed by the founder and president of the Metro Ethernet Forum, Nan Chen.

CENX’s announcement follows a similar one from Equinix last month. But because Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX) promised service launches sometime this year, and CENX has had service up and running in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago for a month now (with facilities capable of hosting multiple terabits of data), CENX appears to be first to market. The two overlap initially in only one city, Chicago, but both plan to expand to many more markets over time.

CENX (pronounced SEE-nex) aims to streamline the process for handing off carrier Ethernet services from one network to the next, translating service characteristics from one carrier’s classifications into others’. This can take months for just one interconnection today, but CENX will establish multiple connections in just days, using common interface specifications established by the Metro Ethernet Forum that Chen expects to be complete early next year.

As founder and president of the MEF, Chen has a clearer view than most of that standards development, potentially giving CENX an edge over Equinix, whose interconnection is also based on the MEF’s not-yet-complete external network-to-network interface (E-NNI) spec. For example, the second phase of that spec has not yet been defined, though it could include things like Ethernet tunneling, for example.

“I’m not hung up on what they’re doing,” Chen said of Equinix. “It’s not a zero-sum game…Clearly being head of the MEF, there’s benefit in terms of being able to see what’s going on in the industry but also to drive the overall direction of the industry.”

The creation of these exchanges will foster a new market for rapid wholesale Ethernet transport that could expand the more-than-$20-billion Ethernet services market by nearly $5 billion in four years, according to Infonetics Research. It will also help service providers reach customer locations outside of their own network footprint, including helping international carriers reach the US locations of their multinational customers.

CENX is trying to make that process easy by offering web portals that use Google Maps mashups to show customers where Ethernet virtual circuits are available as well as the performance history of each line and what service level agreements are available to each location. Customers will place their orders directly with CENX, which will execute them, interconnect the networks and translate the service characteristics.