NAPs were generally set up in university computer room closets, old, damp central offices, or as in the case of the largest NAP of the era, MAE East (MAE stood for Metropolitan Area Ethernet, or Exchange, depending on who you ask), a parking garage in Tysons Corner, Va. Considering the applications for the Internet were limited to e-mail, gopher and other antiquated applications, this bailing wire and masking tape approach suited the Internet perfectly.
Experiments led to alternative NAPs such as the Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX), adding security and other features to support newer networks. However, the players on the Internet also changed, quickly making the original PAIX experiment inappropriate for larger enterprises, government and other sources of online content.