Thanks, Frank, for the great expansion on some of these details. Yes, I was referencing the NAP of the Americas. While I did not have a URL to satisfy your request, I do now, and see that I have inserted SBC for the Bell South entity (I can never figure out 'who is who' inside that terrestrial nest of Octopii), and their use of Washington D.C. for what I believe to be (and stated as) Maryland as the location of the NAP on the Eastern Seaboard (to my untrained eye this is a matter of semantics more so than geography). Other than this, the following story seems to be satisfactory. I only knew of this because Dad is still in Miami, and he brought my attention to this event. As well, either JDN, or another poster on this thread living in S. Florida sent in an article or two from the more-or-less local news. My info was based upon the Miami Herald and Orlando Sentinel accounts of this. I believe the following story is a bit skewed away from the importance of the 45 member consortium which, from my most recent info, is the winner in the tussle, and I will post below an URL showing Cable & Wireless as well joined the consortium prior to the writing of that article, as well as the following additional players from:
businesswire.com
The NAP of the Americas group has 43 members. They are: 360networks, 5th Avenue Channel, Adelphia Business Solutions, Airwire.net, AmericaTel, Amzak International, AT&T, ATC Teleports, Broadwing, Cable & Wireless, CyberGate, Diveo Broadband Networks, Enron, EPIK Communications, Florida Fiber Network, Florida International University, FPL FiberNet, Fusion Telecommunications International, Global Crossing, Global NAPS, GlobalXchange, IFX, ImpSat, Intraco, Level 3, Miami Dade Community College, Mergenet Solutions, Metromedia Fiber Network, Net2Phone, NetRail, NEXTLINK, OCTET Communications, PanAmSat, Progress Telecom, Publicom, Spectrum Telecommunications, Telcordia Technologies, Telia, Time Warner Telecom, University of Florida, University of Miami, Williams Communications and Yipes.
and from:
dbusiness.com
NAP of the Americas on its way up
By Karen J. Cohen, LocalBusiness.com
Sep 07, 2000 05:37 PM ET
MIAMI, Sept. 7 (LocalBusiness.com) -- Terremark Worldwide Inc. said Thursday it agreed to work with Telcordia Technologies Inc. on building and running a facility for a network access point, or NAP, as recommended by a group on that oversees the project.
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The NAP of Americas consortium includes more than 45 telecommunications firms and four universities that have been pushing hard all spring and summer for building a facility to house the project.
Terremark, of Coconut Grove, Fla., has been involved with the group for some time. Morristown, N.J.-based Telcordia, a network software and engineering firm, was formed after the breakup of the Bell System in 1984 to develop technological expertise for the Baby Bells. In 1997, it was acquired by Science Applications International Corp.
Meanwhile, according to Sandra Gonzalez-Levy, Terremark (AMEX: TWW) and Telcordia are now eyeing sites in Latin America where they can team up to build a similar facility.
A network access point is a giant switching station that reroutes Internet traffic when it becomes clogged or congested.
So far, there are only four tier-one NAPs in the United States: New York, Washington, San Francisco and Chicago - all constructed with the National Science Foundation. The Miami NAP -- to be constructed downtown -- would be the only one built without government aid. Boosters say a NAP is crucial to Miami because it will draw more high-tech companies to the area and support the many Miami-based firms doing business online with Latin America.
The group would not release the cost of constructing the NAP, but plans to complete the 730,000 square-foot building by June or July of next year, said Gonzalez-Levy. It will be part of what the company is calling the Technology Center of the Americas, or the TECOTA.
The NAP will be on the second floor of the reinforced building constructed, she said, to withstand a category five hurricane. By comparison, Hurricane Andrew of 1992 was a category four storm.
But in Miami, NAPs, like shoes, seem to come in pairs.
This summer BellSouth, which declined to join the NAP of the Americas group, also announced NAP plans. Instead of housing the switches in one facility, it will connect already existent nodes in Boca Raton, Fla., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., downtown Miami and west Dade County, Fla., to create a kind of virtual NAP. This project is slated to be up by the end of the year.
Both groups have heavy hitters on their teams. BellSouth boasts FPL Fibernet, Qwest, International Wireless Communications and UUNET, among other firms. The NAP of the Americas can point to EPIK Communications, AT&T, Florida Power & Light, and Global Crossing.
From an article ca. April 1997, we have the Caribbean facility, whether or not it did get built I do not know, but I would suspect yes, and perhaps inadequate to the task?
zdnet.com
Latin America Gets A NAP
By Randy Barrett
1:30 PM EDT
CAIS Internet and GTE CODETEL are constructing a new Network Access Point to serve the Caribbean and Central and South America.
The new Network Access Point, or NAP will be called the Latin Internet Exchange, or LIX, and will be based in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
Latin American Netizens
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As always, Frank, I appreciate your input, and considered another question on the return from SLObispo, which would be required to truly answer my questions about the GX offerings vs the competitor's offerings. Any IT professional involved with setting up systems for their company, and having had experience dealing with various players at this time, would possibly be able to give an anecdotal account as to their own experiences with the various players. I figure the multiplicity of offerings and difficulties involved in locating such individuals could be overwhelming, and only by contacting the PR depts of the various bandwidth suppliers might I have an inkling of who is subscribing with whom. I recognize you may have some ideas as to professional trade magazines or other resources for seeking this info, and if so, I would certainly welcome any further comments.
Regards,
Martin Thomas |
