Seattle Internet Exchange


The Seattle Internet Exchange is an Internet exchange point in Seattle, USA. Its switch fabric is centered at the Westin Building and extended to KOMO Plaza, Sabey Intergate, and other locations. The SIX is one of the most successful examples of neutral and independent peering points, created as a free exchange point originally sponsored only by donations. The SIX is the most frequently cited model upon which other neutral Internet exchanges are based, and its financial and governance models are often cited as inspiration for other exchanges. It continues to run without any recurring charges to the participants and current major funding comes from one-time 10 and 100 Gbit/s port fees. The SIX is a 501 tax-exempt non-profit corporation.
As of May 28, 2020 there are 373 routers at the SIX advertising at least 96,000 unique Border Gateway Protocol routes. There are two route servers running the Bird Internet routing daemon.

Technology

The core of the SIX consists of Arista Networks switches, with a 7508R and a 7512R at the Westin Building, and a 7280SR-48C6 at both KOMO Plaza and Sabey Intergate.
Participants may connect to the SIX core using a 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s or 100 Gbit/s Ethernet connection or to one of several extensions. Extensions are sponsored by colocation facilities or transport providers.
Both IPv4 and IPv6 peering is available and encouraged at the SIX, with availability dependent on the peer. Jumbo frame peering at 9000-byte maximum transmission unit is available.

Extensions

The following is a list of SIX extensions: