Entic.net

Our main network provider is Internap, on the 10th floor in the Market Post Tower (San Jose) from CoreSite. We've recently started gathering quotes for a 2nd network provider. We came across Peer1. The negotiations fell through for one main reason:

If we added Peer1 to our mix, we would have to cross connect from 10th floor to Peer1's 16th floor. We weren't interested in dropping Internap and going with Peer1 only, so a cross connect was a must. There was a small catch (or rather a big catch): It would cost $2662 to put in a cross connect to our existing network provider in the same building. WHY was this so expensive!?

Market Post Tower is the most connect building, allowing providers to peer with other providers with ease. However, Peer1 not allowing us to do this was a big drawback (without paying lots of money). We dug a little deeper.

It turns out Peer1 has an office space rented from CoreSite which it converted to data center space. Peer1 has an isolated infrastructure from the rest of the building. Peer1 does not "peer" with CoreSite's Any2 network, so a cross connect would involve some expensive conduit installs. This is where the $2662 quote comes in.

There was no way for us to move our servers to Peer1 and still be connected to our current provider. If we had gone with Peer1, and down the line, if we wanted to not use Peer1 any longer, it would've involved some expensive cross connect charges.

Neither of which sounded interesting, so in the end we dropped Peer1 idea. We've decided to continue to use our premium "pure" Internap network inside Entic.net. We also didn't want to go from the "most connected building" status to a "least connected" floor status. :)