PAIX, the Peering And Internet eXchange, is a neutral Internet exchange point

Internet Exchange Point

An Internet exchange point is a physical infrastructure through which Internet service providers exchange Internet traffic between their networks . IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic which must be delivered via their upstream transit providers, thereby reducing the average per-bit...

 operated by Switch and Data

Switch and Data

Switch and Data Facilities Company, Inc. was a U.S. public corporation that provided network-neutral data centers and Internet exchange services to network-centric businesses.. Switch and Data was acquired by Equinix in 2010....

.

PAIX began operations in 1996 as Palo Alto Internet Exchange in Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

, and was owned and operated by Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...

, or DEC. In its early days, it used a DELNI

Digital Ethernet Local Network Interconnect

The Digital Ethernet Local Network Interconnect was an Ethernet hub with nine ports and AUI connectors, made by Digital Equipment Corporation . Ports one to eight had male connectors and are normally used to attach computer interfaces directly...

 as its interconnection infrastructure.

AboveNet

AboveNet

AboveNet, Inc. , provides high bandwidth connectivity primarily for large corporate enterprises and communications carriers. AboveNet operates private metro area and long haul optical networks, and offers services including high bandwidth metro access to WDM, Metro Ethernet, VPN and IP networks,...

 acquired PAIX, and later sold it to Switch and Data around the time that AboveNet filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Equinix

Equinix

Equinix, Inc. is an American public corporation that provides carrier-neutral data centers and internet exchanges. Equinix provides network-neutral data centers and interconnection services...

 acquired PAIX from Switch and Data April 2010.

Switch and Data provides peering

Peering

In computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the customers of each network. The pure definition of peering is settlement-free or "sender keeps all," meaning that neither party pays the...

 and Internet exchange points in Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...

; Dallas, Texas

Dallas, Texas

Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...

; Miami, Florida

Miami, Florida

Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...

; New York City, New York; Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

; San Jose, California

San Jose, California

San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...

; Seattle, Washington

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

; and Vienna, Virginia

Vienna, Virginia

Vienna is a town in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, it had a population of 15,687. Significantly more people live in zip codes with the Vienna postal addresses bordered approximately by Interstate 66 on the south, Interstate 495 on the east, Route 7 to...

; among other places.