science

MAE-East

MAE-East is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand MAE-East rather than just read about it. In short: The MAE (later, MAE-East) was the first non-governmental Internet Exchange Point (IXP). It began in 1992 with four locations in Washington, D.C., quickly extended to Vienna, Reston, and Ashburn, Virginia; and then subsequently to New York and Miami.

Key takeaways

MAE-East belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect MAE-East to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of MAE-East from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The MAE (later, MAE-East) was the first non-governmental Internet Exchange Point (IXP). It began in 1992 with four locations in Washington, D.C., quickly extended to Vienna, Reston, and Ashburn, Virginia; and then subsequently to New York and Miami. Its name stood for "Metropolitan Area Ethernet," and was subsequently backronymed to "Metropolitan Area Exchange, East" upon the establishment of MAE-West in 1994. The MAE predated the National Information Infrastructure plan, which called for the establishment of IXPs throughout the United States. Although it initially had no single central nexus, one eventually formed in the underground parking garage of an office building in Vienna, VA.

History MAE-East was originally created in 1992, primarily by Scott Yeager of Metropolitan Fiber Systems (MFS) and Rick Adams of UUNET. "A group of network providers in the Virginia area got together over beer one night and decided to connect their networks", said principal MAE-East architect Steven Feldman (MFS). The founding networks were AlterNet (UUNET's backbone service), PSINet and Sprint's International Connections Management (ICM) network. MFS was the service provider offering metropolitan fiber, cross connects and switch ports for the ISPs to interconnect. MAE-East was modeled after FIX East and Fix West. It was established as a Distributed Layer 2 exchange (shared 10-Mbps Ethernet over FOIRL). By February 1993, the 10-Mbps metropolitan Ethernet connected the Sprint Point of presence ("PoP") (hosting Sprint's ICM and AlterNet), College Park PoP (AlterNet and NSFNet), MCI PoP (SURAnet), and WillTel PoP (PSINet). The MAE did not have a multi-lateral peering policy or agreement, so each participant was responsible for independently negotiating their own bilateral peering agreements. There was also no mandatory peering requirement, so no ISP was required to peer with any other.

In 1993, the National Science Foundation awarded MFS/MAE-East a grant establishing it as one of the four original Network Access Points, or NAPs. MAE-East then established a collocation facility at 1919 Gallows Road in Vienna, in a cinder-block room in the underground P1 parking garage. The MAE upgraded to switched Ethernet and shared FDDI in Fall 1994, growing to seven DEC GigaSwitches. FDDI ports were available at 8100 Boone Blvd (in the MFS offices across the road from Gallows Road), 1919 Gallows Road, and a number of private customer POPs. The GigaSwitch access was limited to 100 Mbps, suffered from head-of-line blocking, reached scaling limits, and began to suffer outages. MAE-East FDDI was closed to new customers after 1998 and was shut down in February 2001. MAE-East ATM was intended to be a successor to the FDDI. MAE-East ATM was trialed in 1997 and went into production in 1998. ATM allowed for higher-speed access (e.g. 155mbps-622mbps) and Private Virtual Connections (PVCs), which was conceived of as a solution to some problems in which a single connected network could spread to affect the entire exchange. Frame Relay Access was added in 2002-2003 (155 mbps-2.5 gbps). In 2003, MAE-East ATM/Frame facilities were located at Boone Blvd, Sunrise Blvd, Tyco Road and Ashburn VA. By the time it closed down in 2009, many of the ISPs previously connected to MAE-East had moved to Equinix Ashburn, a nearby Internet exchange which used exclusively gigabit Ethernet as its layer-2 protocol.

See also MAE-West Internet Exchange Point (IXP) Federal Internet Exchange (FIX) Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) Network Access Point (NAP)

References

External links Stan Barber (1996). "State of the Internet: NAPs: The MAEs operated by MFS". Academ Consulting Services. Archived from the original on August 31, 2010. Photograph of 1919 Vienna parking garage, the original mae-east built in a parking garage in the 1990s. mae.net at the Wayback Machine (archived April 30, 2008). See Mae Services White Paper (2005) for historical information. "How Equinix beat MAE-East," a blog written in 2009.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with MAE-East

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what MAE-East claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to MAE-East before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about MAE-East ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of MAE-East

In research: MAE-East appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses MAE-East in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: MAE-East is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1992 establishments in the United States, History of the Internet, Internet exchange points in the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for MAE-East outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study MAE-East in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what MAE-East means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain MAE-East out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is MAE-East in simple terms?

Why does MAE-East matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study MAE-East?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on MAE-East.