Plain-language definitions of the key data center and connectivity terms — then compare real providers and price your project.
A data center is a secure building that hosts servers and network equipment under controlled conditi…
Colocation (also called “housing”) means hosting your own servers in a third party's data center, wh…
A rack (or cabinet) is the standardized 19-inch metal enclosure that holds servers and network gear.…
IP transit is the service by which a carrier sells you access to the whole Internet: it carries your…
Peering is the direct exchange of traffic between two networks (autonomous systems), usually free an…
BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is the protocol that runs routing between the large networks of the In…
An IXP (Internet eXchange Point) is a shared fabric where many networks connect to exchange traffic …
Dark fiber is bare optical fiber, leased “unlit” (with no active equipment on it): you light it with…
A point of presence (PoP) is a site where a carrier installs its network equipment (routers, transmi…
PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) measures a data center's energy efficiency: the ratio of total energ…
The Tier classification (I to IV, defined by the Uptime Institute) rates a data center's redundancy:…
A cross-connect is a physical cable (copper or fiber) that links, inside a data center, your rack to…
A private cloud is a cloud infrastructure (virtualization, self-service, elasticity) dedicated to a …
A dedicated server is a whole physical machine you rent from a host: it provides and maintains the h…
FTTH (Fiber To The Home) and FTTO (Fiber To The Office) are fiber accesses. FTTH is consumer fiber: …