One of the tier 1
MAE (Metropolitan Area Exchange) locations. MAE West is located in San Jose, California and consists of 5
OC3c circuits between
FDDI switches at each end (according to www.mae.net). An excerpt from the aforementioned website:
Tier 1 MAE locations are regarded as "national" connection points and have a combination of the following characteristics:
- One or more of the major ISPs (e.g., Sprint, MCI, UUNET, ANS, Netcom, BBN, PSI) connect to the MAE
- There is a high speed FDDI switch installed offering dedicated higher speed connections
- The sites designated as Tier 1 MAE locations are MAE EAST, MAE CENTRAL, and MAE WEST
Generally, routers with very large routing tables are needed at Tier 1 MAE sites. Examples of these routers are Cisco 4700-M or Cisco 7xxx series routers.