Earlier this week the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a feature story on the 511 Building. They describe the 511…

 The 511 Building is the largest of four carrier hotels in downtown Minneapolis when it comes to the number of fiber-optic cable connections to the outside world. Collectively, the four carriers may handle as much as half of the state’s data traffic — no one knows for sure. Another large chunk of Minnesota’s data traffic is handled by private Internet connections owned by the telecommunications carriers or large corporations.

I used to work in the 511 building. It was kind of cool to go down and really feel like you were in the hub of the Internet – at least the Internet in Minnesota. I suspect it still is.

As the article mentions, the building is very forgettable from the outside. It looks a little bunker-like. The gist of the article is really about how the building seems so insignificant that the Vikings were going to tear it down. Until they learned about its role as the telecommunications hub – and the expense of moving the hub.

The good news is that they decided not to tear down the building but construction will happen near the building, which seems potentially hazardous. I’m sure there is plenty of redundancy built into the system for each server, conduit, fiber, power… but I also suspect that the engineers in charge of the infrastructure will be sleeping with one eye open when construction begins. It might be an opportunity for many carriers to consider diversifying the routes to increase redundancy, which can only make for a stronger network throughout Minnesota.