DuPont Fabros Technology, one of the largest data center developers in the US, announced that its carrier relations director Vinay Nagpal had been given a committee seat in a recently formed non-profit charged with creating a member-controlled certification body for internet exchanges and data centers that host them.

The Open-IX Association's goal is to stimulate standardization among exchange operators in the US to create worthy alternatives to exchanges operated by Equinix. While there is a multitude of non-Equinix-controlled exchanges in the country, the Redwood City, California-based colocation giant controls the most important ones in key markets.

“There is a centralized density of network providers in common centers in North America, resulting in network expansion difficulties outside of those centers and a lack of resiliency in case of disaster,” a document describing the problem on the association's website reads. This high carrier density attracts more carriers, drawing them away from data centers outside of this group of “common centers.”

“Solving this problem should lower costs for all parties and spur internet growth,” the document reads.

Nagpal will sit on the association's committee charged with drafting standards for data centers and meet-me-rooms. Once the standards are drafted, any exchange or data center operator can get endorsed by Open-IX if they show that they meet those standards.

“We strongly support the Open-IX Association and believe it will enable competitiveness and help reduce interconnection and peering complexities and costs in North America,” Nagpal said. “It will provide much-needed options for distributed internet exchanges to the internet community.”

DuPont Fabros plans to pursue certification by the association and to host endorsed internet exchanges in each of the four markets it operates data centers in (Silicon Valley, Northern Virginia, Chicago and New York metro).

The company's biggest competitor, San Francisco-based Digital Realty Trust, which has been deeply involved in establishing Open-IX, also plans to have data centers in all major North American markets endorsed, starting with New York metro and Northern Virginia.

Another major data center provider, CyrusOne, which also operates its own nationwide internet exchange, plans to go after the endorsement as well. Two of the Carrollton, Texas-based company's execs took Open-IX committee seats in September.