Site 1 · planned
Facility name
Operator · city, state
- Fabric switch
- TBD
- Port speeds
- 10GE · 100GE · 400GE
- GLIX cabinet
- TBD
- Meet-me room
- TBD
GLIX/Physical infrastructure/Facilities
Production deployments
Exchange facilities and points of presence
GLIX is designed as a resilient multi-chassis switching fabric distributed across carrier-neutral facilities throughout the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest. Traffic stays local, sub-millisecond, and regionally governed.
Facility selection is not finalized. Each card below is a template: fill in the address, switch model, cabinet, and meet-me-room detail once a site is contracted.
Planned regional topology
Carrier-neutral sites
Facility template
Copy one card per site. Nothing here is contracted yet.
Site 2 · planned
Facility name
Operator · city, state
- Fabric switch
- TBD
- Port speeds
- 10GE · 100GE
- GLIX cabinet
- TBD
- Meet-me room
- TBD
Site 3 · planned
Facility name
Operator · city, state
- Fabric switch
- TBD
- Port speeds
- 10GE · 100GE
- GLIX cabinet
- TBD
- Meet-me room
- TBD
Optical backhaul between sites
Coherent waves
Sites are planned to connect over carrier-diverse dark fiber with coherent transponders, so a single fiber cut cannot partition the fabric.
Jumbo frames
A 9000 byte MTU across the fabric supports replication, storage transport, and high-throughput research flows without fragmentation.
Optical protection
Automatic protection switching is intended to restore a cut span without tearing down BGP sessions on the fabric.
Strict RPKI
Route servers drop RPKI-invalid announcements at the ingress control plane rather than deprioritizing them.
Facility requirements
- Genuinely carrier neutral, with an open meet-me room.
- Diverse entrances and more than one long-haul fiber provider on site.
- Concurrently maintainable power and cooling.
- Remote hands available around the clock.
- A participant density that justifies a switching node.
Operating a qualifying facility and want a GLIX node?
Talk to us →
Provisioning protocol
Cross-connect and port turn-up
Standard IXP procedure for ordering a physical cross-connect with the facility operator.
Submit the port request
Specify the target facility, desired port speed, and interface handoff type. GLIX assigns a switch name, blade, and port index.
NOC response: TBD
Order the cross-connect
Download the issued Letter of Authorization and Customer Facility Assignment and present it to your facility's portal or account team.
Demarcation: single-mode fiber, LC/UPC
Light and verify
Once the cross-connect is complete, the NOC tests optical light levels and transmit and receive digital diagnostics before enabling the port.
Turn-up lead time: TBD
Establish BGP
Bring up both route server sessions and any bilateral sessions you have negotiated with other participants.
See the route server guide
Physical optics and demarcation matrix
| Port speed | Optic standard | Wavelength | Connector | Supported distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10GE | 10GBASE-LR | 1310 nm | LC/UPC duplex, OS2 | Up to 10 km |
| 100GE | 100GBASE-LR4 | 1310 nm LAN-WDM | LC/UPC duplex, OS2 | Up to 10 km |
| 400GE | 400GBASE-DR4 / FR4 | 1310 nm | MPO-12/APC or LC/UPC | 500 m – 2 km |
Multimode fiber is not supported on the GLIX core fabric. Confirm the optic standard with the NOC before ordering a cross-connect.