Fremont, California - January 22, 2002 - The Ameritech Network Access Point in Chicago, the Midwest's largest internet exchange point, has just added Hurricane Electric, a leading Technical Service Provider, to their list of over 140 connected participants.

"The new NAP connection provides our customers with shorter routes to several networks and gives our existing network additional redundancy," said Mike Leber, president of Hurricane Electric.

Hurricane Electric is connected to Ameritech via an OC3 (155 Mbps) and is the eighth exchange point the company is linked to. Other exchange points Hurricane Electric connects to include MAE-West in San Jose, CA; PAIX in Palo Alto, CA; NYIIX in New York, NY; and MAE-East in Vienna, VA.

With the acquisition of Lightning Internet Services last week, Hurricane Electric also expanded their network to New York with an OC3 (155 Mbps) connection between the New York Internet Exchange Point and Ameritech.

With eight exchange points around the nation, Hurricane Electric's self-healing network architecture virtually eliminates a single point of failure. In addition to their own network backbone, they also purchase backup transit from multiple providers in multiple locations to ensure the level of network uptime their customers have come to rely on.

Internet Exchange Points (IX) are switching centers where ISP's and TSP's (Technical Service Providers), like Hurricane Electric, can connect to each other to exchange Internet traffic. Exchange points are located all over the globe to guarantee that packets traveling over the Internet will arrive at their destination via the shortest possible route.

Now connected at Ameritech in Chicago, Hurricane Electric has the ability to peer with the 140 other carriers there. Peering, an agreement between two providers to setup a direct route between their networks, at exchange points is a necessity for all Internet companies. Hurricane Electric's policy is to peer with any network that is connected to one or more of the exchange points that they are located. Currently, Hurricane Electric peers with several hundred companies.