I don't know why this entertains me, but I started using Google Street View to take a look at the addresses of the IXs. Some look like Cyberdyne System from the Terminator movies. While some are these rundown single level plaza buildings with tire shops right beside them.
back when i was in college I wanted to be a network engineer and was fascinated with data centers. I use to call them up and pretend to be scouting for cages for my employer (this is long before "cloud" was a thing) and schedule tours. I would get to see all the cool gear, power backups, fiber and everything and they would be forced to answer all my stupid questions like "what is your backup plan if a tornado hits this place" haha. It was really fun.
EDIT: one time I went to the Yahoo datacenter in Deep Ellum (East side of downtown Dallas). I walked in without calling first, asked for a tour, a couple guys walked away from a foosball table and told me they were too busy and went back to foosball, jerks. Although, they probably knew i was just a random geek in the neighborhood heh.
Lots of IXes used to be phone company switching offices way back in the day. The small ones are ugly (cinderblock huts) and the medium-sized ones are designed to not attract attention.
And then there's that unholy behemoth in downtown Spokane, which until a year ago had what can only be described as 20-foot-tall devil's horns on top of it... which by the way is immune from property taxes (check the county assessor's website) yet nobody seems to know why. We're talking about a 20+ story building that takes up half of a city block here.
Are you talking about the CenturyLink CO in downtown Spokane? Google "AT&T Long lines" for more info.
The main IX point for Spokane is not that building, because it's not carrier neutral, but rather is the US Bank building right in the center of downtown.
I'm talking about 501 W Second Ave; the building has changed hands a few times, and you need to use more than just Google to see what's going on. For a while it was owned by some nonprofit called "Telephone Pioneers".
Legally the building is currently a condo: CenturyLink owns a few floors, AT&T owns a few floors. The building is valued north of $9.5 million and yet nobody has ever paid any property taxes on it (except six bucks a year for the soil and weed control district).
Paying zero property taxes is a dead giveaway for undeclared federal government facilities. They're the only ones who can thumb their nose at state tax collectors and get away with it -- and they take such pride in it that they can't resist doing so, even when it attracts attention.
If you view this link in a WebGL browser you can see the spooky-looking microwave horns (since removed):
There really isn't anything magical about that building, somewhat smaller versions or larger versions are in every city in the USA and Canada. It's a CO (central office). If you see a building in a central location with a suspicious lack of windows, lots of air handlers and generators and a few local telephone company trucks parked outside, that's what it is.
Back in the day those were the central points for switching of all analog dialtone POTS phone lines. Now they are of course major fiber sites for whoever is the ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in the city, which in this case is Centurylink.
Other local examples would be:
Bellingham, intersection of Chestnut street and Forest (centurylink)
Everett, 2604 Rockefeller Ave (frontier)
East Wenatchee: on Eastmont Ave, between 10th St NE and 11st St NE (frontier)
Olympia: Corner of Washington St NE and 8th ave SE, northeast side (centurylink)
