Where to put our router

Tue Aug 26 20:00:42 UTC 2008

Good afternoon (or whatever it is for you ;),

We have just finished moving a large amount of equipment to a new 
facility outside of downtown Chicago. At present we have an uplink via a 
point-to-point to Equinox downtown. We are preparing to add another 
provider, and are debating where we should put our router. The two 
options would be in Equinox downtown (co-located with our existing 
provider) or at the new facility. Were we to do the former we would turn 
our existing point-to-point into our connection from our edge router to 
our distribution switch and add a second point-to-point for redundancy 
from the distro switch back to the router. Were we to do the latter we 
would get a second point-to-point direct from our new provider to their 
network and connect it to our router where it is now.

The major advantage I can think of to having it in Equinox is the 
availability of cross connects to just about anyone. There are a few 
providers in the new facility, but not many. The major disadvantage is 
that if we suddenly need a large amount of transport (i.e. a new large 
client, a definitive short-term possibility)  we would either need to 
get a new or additional point-to-point from downtown to the facility or 
would need to get another router to utilize at the new facility (were we 
to meet up with one of the in-building providers instead of getting the 
point-to-point transport).

Any thoughts related to the advantages or disadvantages of doing one or 
the other would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,

Jake Mertel
Nobis Technology Group, L.L.C.