We first unlocked the capability for customers to connect to Equinix Metal with dedicated connections (leveraging a dedicated port on Equinix Metal's infrastructure) back in 2021. At the time, we didn't prioritize the billing system constructs (long story!) to charge for this feature, so it has been chugging along at a $0 rate.
In September we reached out to all customers currently using this feature via email to notify them that we would begin charging on November 1st, 2022. However, we made the mistake of not posting this on our changelog for wider visibility. Sorry about that!!
How does dedicated port pricing work?
When taking advantage of dedicated ports for connectivity to and from Equinix Metal (via either Fabric or cross connect), there are two fees that will be applied to your Equinix Metal bill in addition to any Fabric or cross connect charges:
- Non-Recurring Charge (NRC). We charge a one-time fee for the cost of reserving a full port on our distribution tier infrastructure and the operational time for setup
- Monthly-Recurring Charge (MRC). We charge a recurring monthly fee to support the work of maintaining routers, switches, east / west capacity, etc. Because were providing the networking capacity within the datacenter, we have to scale our routing/spine/leaf network to move traffic from any server in the Metal platform to the appropriate interconnection point.
Current pricing is listed below for convenience. Any questions? Let's talk!
