1. Physical Interconnection & Demarcation

1.1. Core Locations: DFW-IX provides interconnection services exclusively within designated points of presence (PoPs), currently restricted to DataBank DFW1 (Dallas) and Equinix DA1 (The Infomart).

1.2. Demarcation Point: The demarcation point for all liability and technical operational boundaries is the physical port interface on the DFW-IX Cisco Nexus infrastructure switch.

1.3. Cross-Connects: The Member is solely responsible for ordering, maintaining, and paying all monthly recurring charges (MRC) associated with the physical cross-connect layer between the Member’s cage/patch panel and the DFW-IX assigned patch panel, regardless of data center operator rules.

2. Technical Peering Policy & Fabric Discipline (Mandatory)

To preserve the stability, integrity, and performance of the Fabric, the Member agrees to strict layer-2 and layer-3 technical hygiene. Violation of any of the following parameters constitutes an immediate material breach of this Agreement:

• 2.1. Allowed Traffic Types: Only standard Ethernet II frames containing IPv4 (EtherType 0x0800), IPv6 (EtherType 0x86DD), and ARP (EtherType 0x0806) are permitted.
• 2.2. Prohibited Traffic: The Member shall not forward the following traffic types into the Fabric port under any circumstances: Link-local protocols including, but not limited to: Spanning Tree (STP/RSTP/MSTP), CDP, LLDP, VTP, OSPF, ISIS, or LDP; non-unicast packets (except for controlled ARP and IPv6 Neighbor Discovery); directed broadcasts or subnet-directed broadcasts.
• 2.3. MAC Address Locking: DFW-IX enforces strict MAC address locking. Members are permitted exactly one (1) MAC address per assigned port. Any attempt to forward frames from multiple or unapproved MAC addresses will result in automated port shutdown by our security provisioning system.
• 2.4. MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit): The Fabric supports a maximum Jumbo Frame MTU configuration of 9000 bytes. The Member is solely responsible for ensuring internal routing infrastructure matches the configured MTU to prevent packet drop or fragmentation overhead on external destination routers.

3. Routing Hygiene & BGP Compliance

3.1. Next-Hop Integrity: The Member shall not alter the BGP NEXT_HOP attribute of routes advertised to the Fabric or DFW-IX Route Servers.

3.2. Authorization (IRR & PeeringDB): The Member must maintain up-to-date Internet Routing Registry (IRR) records (e.g., RADb, ARIN) and a valid PeeringDB record. DFW-IX utilizes automated route-filtering based on cryptographic RPKI validation and IRR database matching. Routes failing validation will be discarded implicitly at the ingress boundary.

3.3. IP Transit Bundling Clause: Where DFW-IX provides courtesy, promotional, or unmetered IP Transit bundled within a designated port allocation, such service is delivered on an "as-available/best-effort" basis. DFW-IX reserves the right to rate-limit, throttle, or suspend the IP Transit element instantly if the Member's traffic pattern degrades the local layer-2 exchange fabric performance.

4. Limitation of Liability & "As-Is" Provision

4.1. No Financial Warranties: DFW-IX operates as a cost-recovery, high-availability infrastructure platform. The peering services, ports, and route servers are provided on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis without warranties of any kind, either express or implied.

4.2. Consequential Damages: In no event shall DFW-IX, Manchitas USA Corp, or its upstream data center partners be liable to the Member for any indirect, incidental, special, reliance, punitive, or consequential damages, including but not limited to: loss of revenue, routing blackholes, BGP hijacking by third parties, configuration loops, data center fiber cuts, or operational downtime, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

4.3. Maximum Liability Cap: The total aggregate liability of DFW-IX for any operational incident, negligence, or breach of service SLA (including the 99.99% availability goal) shall be strictly capped at the total amount paid by the Member to DFW-IX during the single (1) calendar month immediately preceding the event giving rise to liability.

5. Indemnification Against Security Incidents (DDoS)

5.1. Network Security: The Member warrants that its network is secured against reflection attacks, open DNS resolvers, open NTP servers, and spoofed source IP allocations.

5.2. Indemnity Obligation: If a Member network originates a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a BGP route leak of global scale, or a malicious traffic flood that saturates the DFW-IX shared switching backplane, the Member shall indemnify, defend, and hold harmless DFW-IX from any third-party claims, legal expenses, or operational penalties imposed by other Fabric participants or data center operators.

6. Termination of Service

6.1. Emergency Disconnection: DFW-IX reserves the absolute right to administratively shut down (shutdown / disable) any physical port immediately, without prior notice, if the Member's equipment behaves in a manner that threatens the operational stability of the shared exchange switching architecture.

6.2. Termination for Convenience: Either party may terminate this interconnection agreement by providing thirty (30) days written notice via the official customer portal or network operations center (NOC) ticketing system.

7. Governing Law & Jurisdiction

This Agreement, its execution, and all operational disputes arising from the interconnection at DataBank DFW1 or Equinix DA1 shall be governed exclusively by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of the State of Texas, USA, without regard to its conflict of laws principles. Any legal action must be filed in the state or federal courts located in Dallas County, Texas.