Why Carrier Hotel is Important.pdf

Appendix VI: Carrier Neutral POP and Circuit Termination Guidelines What is a Carrier Neutral POP and Why is it Important? - Network Background When network service providers service end users, they must aggregate all of that end user traffic. That traffic is then placed on larger backbone or trunk links to be efficiently carried to another location where it is delivered to another customer, or another service provider. Circuits, fiber links and wireless links from end customer locations are brought to a central facility and connected to equipment (multiplexer, switch or router) which combines that traffic and directs it over the backbone or trunks to the appropriate destination. Since a large number of customer connections and critical backbone/trunk links are all converging at a single point, a specialized facility is required. This facility is typically called a POP (Point-of-Presence). In order to ensure the highest level of reliability for these facilities, great care and expense is taken to construct the facilities with protection from natural and manmade disasters, as well as high capacity, redundant systems for all critical functions (power, cooling, security, fire detection/suppression). Historically, each service provider built their own POPs and used them exclusively for services to their own customers and connections to their own backbone. The LECs have many of these facilities and refer to t hem as Centra l Offices. A T T , MCI, Sprint a n d other long haul carriers also have their own POPs. They interconnected their POPs with the LEC’s Central Offices using circuits, usually over fiber. Internet service providers (ISPs) also built their own POPs, and purchased circuits into their POPs from the LECs for customer connections, and long haul carriers for their backbone links. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 introduced many changes to the industry, opening it to an unpreceden