Case Study: Midwest Internet Cooperative Exchange achieves 75+ Gbps peak traffic, lower latency and reduced costs with Cologix

The Midwest Internet Cooperative Exchange (MICE) partnered with Cologix to scale significantly within the 511 Building, the region’s carrier hotel

The Midwest Internet Cooperative Exchange (MICE) needed a local peering alternative to avoid routing regional traffic through congested Chicago exchange points, which caused latency and higher transit costs. Partnering with Cologix, MICE used space, power and Cologix’s Meet‑Me‑Room (MMR) at the 511 Building in downtown Minneapolis to establish a carrier-neutral peering fabric and host the MICE core switch.

Cologix provided donated space, power and dense direct connectivity to 70+ networks at the 511 Building, enabling MICE to onboard major participants like Google and Netflix and scale rapidly. As a result, MICE grew to 50+ peering participants and saw aggregate traffic rise from essentially zero to peaks over 75 Gbps by December 2014, reducing latency, lowering transit costs and improving regional network availability and performance with Cologix’s infrastructure.

Midwest Internet Cooperative Exchange