Equinix Fabric FAQs
Key Features
What is Equinix Fabric?
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.
What are the benefits of connecting via Equinix Fabric?
Equinix Fabric allows customers to connect digital and physical infrastructure in real-time between 50+ global metros and thousands of providers, customers, and partners.
What use cases does Equinix Fabric solve?
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.
What are the components of Equinix Fabric (port types, VC types)?
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.
How is redundancy managed on Equinix?
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.
What monitoring capabilities are available on Equinix Fabric?
- 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.
How is security managed on Equinix Fabric?
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.
How does Equinix Fabric work with Network Edge and Equinix Metal?
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.
Does Equinix Fabric support Bi-Directional Forwarding Detection (BFD) across their VCs today?
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 Globally
Where is Equinix Fabric available Globally?
Equinix Fabric is available in 50+ metros globally. See Equinix Fabric Availability on equinix.com for global availability information.
Who can I connect with on the Equinix Fabric platform?
Connect to Service Providers, Yourself (Internal), or Another Fabric Customer.
How do I connect my router to Equinix Fabric?
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.
What virtual connection speeds are supported on Equinix Fabric?
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
Note:
For details on 25 and 50 Gbps connections availability see:
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.
What is the difference between Equinix Fabric and Equinix Cross Connect?
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.
Ports
How do I order an Equinix Fabric Port?
The best way to Order an Equinix Fabric Port is through the Equinix Customer portal. If you are unable to order through the portal you can engage your Equinix Account Team to submit a manual quote offline.
I have my ports; how do I start using Equinix Fabric?
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 the Fabric Dashboard on the Equinix Customer Portal for your reference.
Where can I find my ‘Port Name?’
All information related to your port can be found in the Ports Inventory including the Port Name, Cable ID, Bandwidth, and other technical information like Priority and Encapsulation Type.
What is the difference between a remote port and a remote connection?
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).
What port configurations are available for Equinix Fabric?
See the Port Architectures page for supported configurations.
Where is 100G available on Equinix Fabric?
100G is available in the majority of our markets globally. Contact your account team for information on specific markets or IBX data centers.
Get Started
How do I create an account on the Equinix Customer portal?
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 Customer 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 Customer Portal and proceed to create a new billing account.
Where can I learn about the basic navigation and functionality of the Equinix Customer portal?
Watch the Fabric Overview video to learn the basics about the Equinix Customer portal, and then see Portal Navigation Overview
Where can I learn about user permissions and sub accounts?
Users are created in the Equinix Customer Portal. There are specific Fabric Permissions that can be used for granular management of the resources (ports, connections, and service profiles) users are able to create, view, update, and delete.
How do I stay up to date on new Equinix Fabric markets & service providers?
Subscribe to our Quarterly Ecosystem Update to receive ecosystem updates and product stories inclusive of new service providers, cloud on-ramps, and global metro expansions.
Support
Do I need a Turn-Up Call to use my new Equinix Fabric Port?
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.
I’m having a technical issue on Equinix Fabric. Who do I contact?
You can Submit a Trouble Ticket in the 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.
What are the Equinix Fabric SLAs for latency, up-time, and provisioning?
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.
Why am I seeing a PVID Inconsistency Error on my Fabric Connected Switch?
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:
- 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.
- 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.
Service Providers
I am a Service Provider. How do I offer connectivity to my services on Equinix Fabric?
In order to enable customers to connect to your service, you need to [Create a Service Profile](service-profiles/Fabric-service profiles.htm) in the Equinix Customer portal.
What is a Service Profile?
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.
How do I get my logo added to my service profile?
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.
How do I create a private profile?
You can choose to create a Layer 2 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).
What is a Service Token?
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.
Which Service Providers can I connect with on Equinix Fabric in what locations?
See Equinix Fabric Provider Availability for a current list of providers and locations.
How do I make a connection to a Service Provider on Equinix Fabric?
Detailed how-to guides for the top Service Providers are available. See the Service Providers page.