Telecommunications - Carriers  Different service providers/carriers does not guarantee diversity  Carriers often share cables, routes, and buildings  Carriers often re-engineer routes  Two diversely routed circuits from the same carrier may be re- engineered to overlap unless your contract ensures diversity for the circuits

Telecommunications - Carriers  Diverse underground telecommunications entrances with diverse routes to multiple service provider point of presences [POPs] (i.e., where service provider provides connections to local carriers)  Requirement specified in TIA and BICSI standards is 20 m (66 ft) separation between building entrances and along entire route to service provider POPs and higher level service provider locations (e.g., Network Access Points [NAPs] or higher level carrier offices)

Telecommunications - Carriers  Tier 1 service providers in the data center (AT&T, CenturyLink, Cogent, Deutsche Telekom, GTT, Level 3, NTT, Sprint, Verizon, XO)  Latency to other data centers, offices, and customers  Does colo owner provide network for access to multiple service providers? If so, what connection types/speeds and services are available (e.g., DDoS protection, traffic monitoring)?

Internet Exchange  Is the data center an Internet Exchange (IX) - where several Internet service providers connect to each other to exchange traffic? These are hubs of the Internet and offer non-ISP customers the ability to connect to multiple service providers.  Some large data centers operate large IXs, but only to customers in their data centers.  Alternative is Open-IX certified data center that is both carrier neutral and data center operator neutral. 5

Cloud Computing  Latency  To multiple cloud service providers for hybrid cloud (to maximize performance and choice of providers)  To enterprise data center if cloud computing at colo interacts with apps at enterprise data center  Does data center switch fabric need to extend to colo? If so, need multiple dark fiber <= 40 km reach of 40/100/400G Ethernet (preferably diversely routed)

Remote Support  What type of support and monitoring does the site provide?  Local monitoring of network connectivity and traffic (e.g., mitigation of DDoS attacks, monitoring of traffic level to proactively determine when more bandwidth is needed)?  Can local staff do inventory, installation, configuration, and troubleshooting of equipment and cabling?  Level of expertise, quality of documentation and procedures?

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