When 1623 Farnam recently asked tenants what they wanted most from the facility, the answers were clear – access to more content and high-value peering opportunities.

1623 asked. The tenants answered. And we delivered — not only with a recent major hyperscaler network turn-up, but with another high-value ecosystem expansion to boot.

In May, 1623 announced  a key hyperscaler had upgraded its 1623 port from 40G to 100G, delivering a major expansion and offering a slew of new networking and peering opportunities in the 1623 ecosystem. But as promised, 1623 didn’t stop there. The company has just announced another major expansion that will greatly benefit 1623 tenants.

Akamai Technologies, Inc., has upgraded its presence at 1623 from a single 40G port to not one, but two 100G ports. That’s right — Akamai, a leading provider of cloud services for securing, delivering and optimizing content and business applications, is bringing even more unique advantages to the 1623 ecosystem. The company’s cloud solutions keep network infrastructure and applications safe from the rapidly growing threat of cyberattacks and other threats, and now, the 1623 ecosystem can leverage even more space to peer with this leading provider.

Gaining momentum

Right now, it looks like all roads – and networks – run through Omaha. These  most recent arrivals (Subspace, PacketFabric, and Akamai) come just a few months after Arelion, the company offering the #1-ranked global internet backbone, expanded its network capacity and capabilities at 1623’s interconnected edge data center in January.

Like the recent turn-ups, the Akamai expansion is evidence of an exciting phenomenon taking hold at 1623 – data gravity. As more and more providers join the ecosystem, more peering opportunities open up for existing tenants — and those opportunities draw in even more providers looking to be where the action is. This ongoing, self-fulfilling momentum is the value of data gravity. 

The key to peering, of course, is having good partners to peer with. Peering doesn’t just reduce transit costs and increase bandwidth performance, it can also mean having access to more content that people are looking for. This is especially critical as the global pandemic has changed how people work, learn, shop and even entertain themselves online. Furthermore, with the advent of 5G and the promise of download speeds at the millisecond level, people want their content delivered at light speed with no glitches.

As the regional leader in network-neutral, edge interconnection, 1623 Farnam and its Omaha IX internet exchange are ideally positioned to offer direct access to more than 50 network providers with local, national and international reach, along with the high-demand content they carry.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about data gravity is that it has no limits. It’s a self-perpetuating growth cycle gaining momentum and resulting in a richer, more highly connected ecosystem for all 1623 tenants.

To learn more about data gravity and 1623’s increasingly rich interconnectivity, check out our website here.  There’s always room for one more.