A cross-connect is a physical cable (copper or fiber) that links, inside a data center, your rack to another party's: a carrier, a cloud, an IXP or another customer. It's the direct connection that materializes an interconnection.
A cross-connect is usually billed as a setup fee plus a monthly charge per link. It's one of the key line items in total colocation cost: the more interconnections you add (transit, cloud, peering), the more cross-connects you accumulate.
Compare data centers →