Equinix Fabric FAQs

Equinix Fabric is an advanced software-defined interconnection solution that enables you to directly, securely, and dynamically connect to distributed infrastructure and digital ecosystems on platform Equinix through a single port. Equinix Fabric is offered to you through the Equinix Fabric web portal and REST APIs.

Equinix Fabric allows customers to connect digital and physical infrastructure in real-time between 50+ global metros and thousands of providers, customers, and partners.

The main use cases that Equinix Fabric solves are hybrid cloud network access, improved network agility connecting to a variety of NSPs virtually, and a business exchange to connect to your business partners, suppliers, and customers.

To learn more about our Equinix Fabric use cases, see Enterprise Use Cases and Service Providers & Partners Use Cases.

There are a number of Technical Components of Fabric, the main ones being Virtual Connections and Ports. See the Port Types page to learn more about available port types.

See our developer documentation site for more information about using and implementing our APIs.

Equinix Fabric is operated as a fully redundant platform with Primary and Secondary chassis and customers are able to choose the right level of redundancy in their architecture. Equinix is building redundancy into our backbone by enabling dual NSPs in each remote connection route. The ring shape topology allows us to fail-over to a secondary route when required.

• Receive Port/Virtual Connection Up/Down notifications by subscribing to the Equinix Messaging Gateway.

• View port utilization in your Equinix Fabric Dashboard and in the Port Details section.

Security is one of the highest priorities at Equinix. See our Security page to understand the policies and procedures followed by Equinix to protect your equipment and data.

The infrastructure running Equinix Fabric, Network Edge, and Equinix Metal is redundantly connected so you can leverage Equinix Fabric from either of these platforms virtually using our shared infrastructure. Metal users can also leverage a dedicated Equinix Fabric port, giving you full control of the physical port and the traffic. Network Edge users can also use physical Equinix Fabric ports to BYOC to Connect a Device to an NSP.

For L2 services offered today, Equinix Fabric is transparent to BFD protocol. For L3 service offered today, Equinix Fabric can participate in a customer’s BFD session (optional through Portal setting).

Connect to Service Providers, Yourself (Internal), or Another Fabric Customer.

The Equinix Fabric port and cross connect to your cage/cabinet is included as part of the Fabric port. All that is left to arrange is the patching within the cabinet to your equipment, which your engineers can complete. You can also Order Smart Hands to have Equinix personnel to complete the connection on your behalf.

The speeds available for a specific destination are designated by the Service Providers up to 50 Gbps. The standard Equinix Fabric billing tiers are:

• 10 Mbps

• 50 Mbps

• 200 Mbps

• 500 Mbps

• 1 Gbps

• 2 Gbps

• 5 Gbps

• 10 Gbps

• 25 Gbps

• 50 Gbps

Tip: If a service provider doesn't allow for higher bandwidth connections, you can configure multiple virtual connections to a certain destination using a single 100 Gbps port or multiple 10 Gbps ports in a LAG group.

Cross Connects are physical interconnections within an IBX or campus that are typically available as Single-Mode Fiber with no fixed bandwidth. Equinix Fabric leverages virtual connections available in real-time globally at a fixed speed.

The best way to Order an Equinix Fabric Port is through the Equinix Fabric portal. If you are unable to order through the portal you can engage your Equinix Account Team to submit a manual quote offline.

You will receive an email to confirm the port is provisioned and ready for use. Reference it for detailed next steps. A copy of the completion notice is stored in Equinix Fabric on the Equinix Customer Portal for your reference. See the Getting Started page to begin your journey using your new Equinix Fabric ports.

All information related to your port can be found in the Port Inventory including the Port Name, Cable ID, Bandwidth, and other technical information like Priority and Encapsulation Type.

A remote port is used when you are not co-located in one of our IBX data centers and you use an NSP to connect from your location to an IBX with Equinix Fabric. See the Port Types page for more information.

A remote connection is used to connect to a CSP, partner, or even yourself in an Equinix Fabric market (such as Chicago) when you are in a different Equinix Fabric market (such as New York).

See the Port Details page for supported configurations.

100G is available in the majority of our markets globally. Contact your account team for information on specific markets or IBX data centers.

Existing customers can create new billing accounts to order Fabric Services in new countries which is fully self-service from the Fabric Port ordering flow in Fabric Portal. If you are not yet a customer of Equinix globally you can Request an Account so you are able to log in to Equinix Fabric portal and proceed to create a new billing account.

No, your port should be usable as soon as it’s provisioned so Turn-Up calls are optional for customers. If port testing is unsuccessful, you can complete a Turn-Up Call Request. Click Support at the top of the page and use your Order Information to complete the Turn-Up Call request.

You can Submit a Trouble Ticket in the Equinix Fabric portal or Equinix Customer Portal if you are having technical issues. Equinix Fabric Support also provides access to tools and expertise that enable the success and operational health of your Equinix Fabric solutions. The status of existing tickets can be checked in the Order & Ticket History on Equinix Customer Portal.

The Equinix Fabric Product and Policy Document is a guiding contractual template explaining general Equinix definitions, policies, SLAs, and the Terms and Conditions of doing business with Equinix. The Equinix Fabric Product and Policy document is a guiding document, and not a contract.

When devices interconnected across an Equinix Fabric Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) Virtual Connection (VC) are both running Cisco PVST+ (Per-VLAN Spanning Tree Plus), and using different VLAN numbers on each side of the VLAN translation feature of Equinix Fabric, one or both devices will register a PVID inconsistency and put the respective VLAN into an STP blocking state, effectively breaking the VC.

Cisco switches, or any vendor, running PVST+ use the Cisco proprietary MAC address of 01-00-0C-CC-CC-CD. As such, PVST+ Bridge Protocol Data Units (BPDUs) will be passed transparently across Equinix Fabric. To prevent possible VLAN inconsistency issues between switches running PVST+ a customer has two options:

1. Ensure VLAN IDs match on both sides – If you’re using the same VLAN ID on both sides, PVST+ on 802.1Q tagged VLANs will run without issue.

2. Enable BPDU filtering at the interface level on one or both sides of the connection.

PVST+ uses a Shared Spanning Tree Protocol (SSTP) BPDU allowing each VLAN to run its own STP instance independent of other VLANs. For this to work, and maintain a loop-free environment, the SSTP BPDU must be able to identify the VLAN from which it originates. This is done through a Type-Length-Value (TLV) field appended to the SSTP BPDU containing the VLAN ID of the originating VLAN. When a VLAN receives an SSTP BPDU, it performs a validation check to ensure the VLAN ID reported in the TLV field matches the VLAN the BPDU was received on. If they do not match the VLAN will be in a PVID inconsistent state and the VLAN will be blocked by STP.

Equinix Fabric EVPL VCs block all Layer 2 Control Protocols (L2CPs). Understanding STP BPDUs are an L2CP can be confusing to some as the expectation is these BPDUs will be blocked, which they are, but these are standard BPDUs, not the PVST+ SSTP BPDU.

The main difference between PVST+ and standard Spanning Tree protocols is that PVST+ runs one spanning tree instance per VLAN. To ensure there is no interference between PVST+ and other legacy spanning tree implementations, PVST+ uses a different MAC address for PVST BPDUs, 01-00-0C-CC-CC-CD. Standard spanning tree uses MAC address of 01-80-C2-00-00-00 which falls within the L2CP range of MAC addresses; 01-80-C2-00-00-00 through 01-80-C2-00-00-0F, and 01-80-C2-00-00-20 through 01-80-C2-00-00-2F, all of which are blocked on Equinix Fabric EVPL VCs.

Because PVST+ does not use a MAC address within the standard L2CP range, PVST+ SSTP BPDUs are passed through Equinix Fabric EVPL VCs untouched. If one side receives a BPDU that doesn’t match the VLAN it’s received on, it will put the VLAN into an STP blocked state, and not pass traffic until the mismatch is corrected.

A mismatch can be resolved by matching the VLAN ID on both sides or blocking BPDUs altogether to ensure a VLAN ID mismatch is not detected in the first place.

In order to enable customers to connect to your service, you need to Create a Service Profile in the Equinix Fabric portal.

Service profiles allow you to promote your services on Equinix Fabric. They can be either public or private. Public service profiles allow any Equinix Fabric user to see your service profile and create a connection to it. Public profiles are visible on the Equinix external website. Private service profiles enable you to grant access to specific Equinix Fabric customers, allowing them to view and connect to your service.

We have to add your logo manually. Open a Support Ticket with the Type = Other to engage our Customer Reliability Engineering (CRE) team to assist in uploading your logo. See the Support page for more information.

You can choose to create a Layer 2 or Layer 3 Service Profile and then use the Profile Visibility options to make it private to grant access to specific Equinix Fabric customers. Alternatively, you can use a Service Token to create a unique, single-use access key for customers to access your interconnection assets (such as Fabric ports).

A service token authorizes another customer to access your ports. There are two types of service tokens available: A-side and Z-side. A-side service tokens authorize another customer to connect from your port to another service provider available on Fabric. Z-side service tokens authorize another customer to connect to your port(s) from their port or virtual device.

See Equinix Fabric Provider Availability for a current list of providers and locations.

Detailed how-to guides for the top Service Providers are available. See the Service Providers page.