DuPont Fabros Technology announced a second deal this month with a European internet exchange operator who will establish an exchange at one of its data centers.

Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) will build an exchange at a DuPont Fabros facility in Piscataway, New Jersey. Just this week, the exchange operator also announced a similar deal with one of the wholesale data center provider's largest competitors Digital Realty Trust, saying it will build an exchange at one of Digital Realty's New York City data centers.

DuPont Fabros announced just last week that London Internet Exchange was planning to establish an exchange at its massive data center campus in Ashburn, Virginia.

The AMS-IX New Jersey node will become part of AMS-IX New York, a neutral distributed Internet exchange point for the New York and New Jersey metro. AMS-IX is based in Amsterdam and claims to be the largest internet exchange in the world, connecting more than 600 IP networks from about 60 countries.

Job Whitteman, CEO at AMS-IX, said the Piscataway data center provided a good peering location outside of Manhattan. “It is strategically located in New Jersey and enables a straight line in the shortest possible distance east of Chicago,” he said.

“We expect this internet exchange to evolve into a major interconnection hub outside of Manhattan furthering complementing [DuPont Fabros'] interconnection services for its customers.”

DuPont Fabros has built a tri-lateral underground conduit system that encompasses a three-mile radius of its NJ1 data center – he building that will house the future exchange. This conduit system provides three redundant underground fiber entrances into the facility.

At present, there are 20 network carriers providing connectivity services at the site, including the New York Stock Exchange Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure (SFTI) network. The building also offers connectivity to other network hubs in the area and to sub-sea cable landing stations in Long Island and New Jersey connecting the Eastern seaboard of the US to Europe and South America.

The AMS-IX New Jersey node at NJ1 will be built both as a core-switch and as an edge-switch site of AMS-IX New York. The switching architecture will be based on Brocade MLX routers with peering services provided by AMS-IX USA, while DuPont Fabros will provide cross connects to the exchange.

The New Jersey node is expected to go live before the end of the year.

The agreement supports the data center wholesaler's plan to host an internet exchange in each of its four markets certified by the recently formed non-profit Open-IX. The association was formed to promote standards for internet exchanges and data center providers that host them in the US to provide an alternative to Equinix, the colocation company that controls nearly all key exchanges in the country.