Be a Technium Insider and check out our blog!

Why the BOSIX Upgrade to the Fabric Matters

Written by R. Leigh Hennig | Feb 6, 2024 3:30:00 PM

The Boston Internet Exchange (BOSIX) hosted at Markley’s One Summer Street and Lowell locations, provides customers with a unique IP peering network across a proprietary switching fabric.

Allowing for both low and high-speed connections, the BOSIX is designed to optimize network performance and eliminate the unnecessary costs associated with intermediary networks. It allows participants within the Markley campus to :

  • Peer directly with one another
  • Eliminate hops
  • Reduce latency
  • Enhance security

In order to take advantage of this fast, low-latent connectivity, companies and organizations have traditionally needed to have a presence on the Exchange, provisioning and managing their own peering sessions with other participants. Now, with BOSIX over DIA (Direct Internet Access) on the Fabric, that dynamic has changed. By peering with providers so you don’t have to, the level of effort needed to take advantage of the BOSIX is dramatically simplified.

The first two peers are Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft, with more coming over time. 

Pulling down all the public prefixes announced by AWS allows us to deliver your traffic directly to such services as S3, CloudFront, EC2, DynamoDB, and more. Likewise, peering with Microsoft enables us to offer you all of the publicly announced prefixes, like Microsoft 365 (Teams, OneDrive, Copilot, Outlook, and others).

Absolutely nothing is required from your end to make this happen. Traffic from Markley customers utilizing the Fabric for their DIA service is now automatically sent directly to the BOSIX participants we peer with. There are no requirements to turn up new connections, no configuration adjustments that need to be made, no IPs that need to be reassigned, no further routes to exchange, and no contracts to update or billing agreements to sign—it just happens. 

Want to take a deeper dive into BOSIX? Read this blog article by R. Leigh Hennig which explains the implications of the Boston Internet Exchange on the Fabric and what this means for our customers.

Want to see if connecting to BOSIX through the Fabric is right for your company? Get in touch to find out.