What is a Cross-Connect?

There are many types of cross-Connects. Digital, Optical, Horizontal, ETC… They all are for connecting from one carrier or providers circuit to another. They are a segment of the entire end to end circuit.

What is an Extended DMARC (Demarcation Point)? This is usually at the tail end of the Circuit on the end users side. Generally the circuit gets delivered to the MPOE (Minimum Point of Entry). Then the circuit gets extended to the suite, building or room the end user wishes the equipment to be located.

Is the Handoff of my Circuit in the Telco-Room or the basement? Not always. Some carriers have their own area that they have equipment it may be in a completely different location that you might expect. The best bet is to have the carrier specify the address the floor the suite the room. If there are multiple carriers or a lot of equipment, ask for the Rack the shelf and the port location. Remember on almost everything but a T1 you will have two ports. Transmit and receive. Read the rest of this entry »

I have had quite a few requests regarding DNS and how it can affect a corporate and service provider environment. In addition some issues that you may not be aware of when it comes to Geocoding.

It is much easier to remember www.intelletrace.com instead of 216.211.160.14. Unless you are very new to the internet this should be a basic understanding. Originally this was done with a Hosts file on each computer. As the number of devices on the original ARPA Net grew, this became an unrealistic way of tracking and naming the devices on the internet. DNS was created. The evolution of this has changed, so I will save you the history lesson and cut to how things are done today.

When you type in www.intelletrace.com into your web browser, your computer looks at its TCP/IP configuration. Part of that configuration is a Primary and possibly a Secondary DNS Server. Your computer asks the configured DNS server what is the IP Address for www.intelletrace.com. The server will make one of three determinations. Am I the Authorities DNS Server, or am I a Caching DNS server. There is a third type that really falls into the Caching realm but it always makes the request of a specified Name Server instead of asking the top level name servers. DNS Forwarder is generally set up by default in Microsoft DNS Servers.
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