When Carver County set out to build a fiber optic network three years ago, the ultimate goal was connecting to the so-called 511 building in Minneapolis, considered the most wired building in Minnesota and a major source of fiber optic data transmission and reception.
"They call the 511 building a 'hotel' or hub," said Steve Taylor, Carver County's director of administrative services. "It's a nerve center for all the major Internet providers. ... Connecting to it would allow us to get better Internet access and rates."
But the very fact that the 511 building is so popular also creates a concern: What would happen if something happened to shut down the building or the fiber lines connecting it to Chicago?
"You never want to have a single point of failure," Taylor said Wednesday, five months before Carver breaks ground on its $7.5 million fiber ring. "You can't rely on one line. I'm all for another 511 building for redundancy. I wouldn't mind five or six of them, in fact."
The city of Eagan shares that assessment, and it is willing to spend $2 million or more to back up its belief that the Twin Cities needs more "carrier hotel" facilities like the 511 building, which is also considered a high-security data center or "co-location" site -- a warehouse-sized structure that allows companies to move or store large volumes of information off-site.
"Data center space in the Twin Cities? There is not enough," said Andrew Cohill of Design Nine, a Virginia company hired to do consulting on broadband for Eagan.
According to a draft report to the Eagan City Council from a task force looking into bringing a data center to Eagan, the Twin Cities market is vastly under-served by high-level, carrier-neutral data centers to provide storage backup and house multiple Internet and communication firms.
The City Council is expected to give its blessing to explore the idea next week.