The Westin Building Exchange is a major

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

hub facility located downtown

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...

. The building was constructed in 1981 as the Westin Building, housing the corporate offices of

Westin Hotels Westin Hotels & Resorts is an American upscale hotel chain owned by Marriott International. , the Westin Brand has 226 properties with 82,608 rooms in multiple countries in addition to 58 hotels with 15,741 rooms in the pipeline. History Wester ...

, which was then based in Seattle. It is also home to the Seattle Internet Exchange (SIX) and Pacific Northwest Gigapop's Pacific Wave Exchange. The facility has a pair of " Meet-me Rooms" on the 19th floor, which are used by telecommunication carriers and internet service providers to cross-connect their individual networks. These carriers situate their POPs within racks spread throughout the building, connecting back to the meet-me room via

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass ( silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a mea ...

cabling, facilitating interconnection with other carriers' infrastructure within the building. The Westin Building's meet-me room is the heart of the facility, where buyers and sellers of

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

services offer interconnectivity to their backbones and diverse services without the need to utilize telephone company provided interconnections.Rawlson King
"Meet-Me Rooms Provide Cheap Carrier Cross-Connects"
The Web Host Review. In 2020,

real estate investment trust A real estate investment trust (REIT) is a company that owns, and in most cases operates, income-producing real estate. REITs own many types of commercial real estate, including office and apartment buildings, warehouses, hospitals, shopping cente ...

Digital Realty Digital Realty Trust, Inc. is a real estate investment trust that invests in carrier-neutral data centers and provides colocation and peering services. As of December 31, 2019, the company owned interests in 225 operating data center facilitie ...

acquired a majority stake in the building and assumed management responsibilities.

References

External links

The Westin Building Exchange official site

Seattle Internet Exchange
{{Seattle skyscrapers Skyscraper office buildings in Seattle Office buildings completed in 1981 Telecommunications buildings in the United States