• The 511 Building hosts MICE, dozens of carriers and multiple colocation providers at a major Minneapolis interconnection site
  • The facility says on-site operators offer UPS and generator backup plus multiple power and cooling configurations

The Fact

An outage at the 511 Building in downtown Minneapolis on 6 August disrupted internet connectivity across parts of Minnesota and the wider Midwest, MPR News reported. The facility, also known as the Minnesota Technology Center, is a carrier hotel where telecoms operators, internet providers and other networks interconnect. It hosts the Midwest Internet Cooperative Exchange (MICE), dozens of carriers and multiple colocation providers.

The 511 Building says on-site operators offer UPS and generator backup and multiple power and cooling configurations, as well as access to metro and long-haul fibre routes. PeeringDB lists MICE interconnection facilities at Cologix MIN1 in the 511 Building and Ridgeview Minnetonka, so the exchange is not confined to the downtown site. MPR reported that connectivity was restored after the disruption.

The Assessment

For networks using 511, separate carrier contracts may still converge on the same physical site. A primary and backup circuit can terminate in the same carrier hotel or depend on equipment inside the same building, leaving both exposed to a site-level disruption.

That makes the physical route behind each circuit as important as the carrier providing it. Operators need to know where backup traffic enters the network, where it interconnects and whether it can reach another facility without passing through 511. MICE also operates in Minnetonka, but the available reporting does not establish which affected networks could use that location or how traffic was rerouted during the outage. For BTW readers, the practical issue is physical separation.

Two carrier contracts provide limited resilience if both paths still depend on 511; a genuinely independent backup route needs to avoid the same building-level failure point.

What to Watch

A post-incident account from the 511 Building, MICE, or an on-site colocation provider could identify the failed component, affected services, and restoration route. Confirmation that traffic was rerouted through another Minneapolis facility would indicate whether some networks had site-level diversity during the outage. It remains unclear how many primary and backup paths depended on 511.