A "meet me room" is a place within a colocation centre

Colocation centre

A colocation centre or colocation center , is a type of data centre where equipment space and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers...

 (or carrier hotel) where telecommunications companies can physically connect to one another and exchange data without incurring local loop

Local loop

In telephony, the local loop is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the carrier or telecommunications service provider's network...

 fees. Services provided across connections in an MMR may be voice circuits

Telecommunication circuit

A telecommunication circuit is any line, conductor, or other conduit by which information is transmitted.A dedicated circuit, private circuit, or leased line is a line that is dedicated to only one use...

, data

Data (computing)

In computer science, data is information in a form suitable for use with a computer. Data is often distinguished from programs. A program is a sequence of instructions that detail a task for the computer to perform...

 circuit

Electronic circuit

An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow...

s, or Internet protocol

Internet Protocol

The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...

.

To interconnect, companies order a patch from their cage

Patch panel

A patch panel or patch bay is a panel, typically rackmounted, that houses cable connections. One typically shorter patch cable will plug into the front side, whereas the back holds the connection of a much longer and more permanent cable...

 or suite to the MMR, and then arrange for the organization running the facility to connect them together. These physical connections may be fibre, coax

Coaxial cable

Coaxial cable, or coax, has an inner conductor surrounded by a flexible, tubular insulating layer, surrounded by a tubular conducting shield. The term coaxial comes from the inner conductor and the outer shield sharing the same geometric axis...

, twisted pair

Twisted pair

Twisted pair cabling is a type of wiring in which two conductors are twisted together for the purposes of canceling out electromagnetic interference from external sources; for instance, electromagnetic radiation from unshielded twisted pair cables, and crosstalk between neighboring pairs...

, or any other networking medium.

Typically, a meet me room will discourage or disallow customers from installing large amounts of equipment. However, multiplexing

Multiplexing

The multiplexed signal is transmitted over a communication channel, which may be a physical transmission medium. The multiplexing divides the capacity of the low-level communication channel into several higher-level logical channels, one for each message signal or data stream to be transferred...

 equipment is often welcome in the meet me room, so that a customer can have a single connection between the meet me room and the rest of their equipment in the building, and the multiplexing equipment can then break that out to allow for direct, private connections to several other organizations present in the meet me room.

An Internet Exchange Point

Internet Exchange Point

An Internet exchange point is a physical infrastructure through which Internet service providers exchange Internet traffic between their networks . IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic which must be delivered via their upstream transit providers, thereby reducing the average per-bit...

 can also be present in a meet me room (such as the Boston MXP

Boston MXP

The Boston MXP is an Internet Exchange Point in Boston, Massachusetts and Quincy, Massachusetts. It was originally founded by MAI in 1996. It supports 10 megabit and 100 megabit connections on copper, and gigabit connections on fiber.-External links:* *...

 in the meet me room at One Summer Street) to allow many organizations in the meet me room to interchange traffic

Internet traffic

-Historical Internet Traffic Growth:Because of the distributed nature of the Internet, there is no single point of measurement for total Internet traffic...

 without having to have physical interconnections between every possible pair of organizations.

External links

• A description of PAIX
  PAIX
  PAIX, the Peering And Internet eXchange, is a neutral Internet exchange point operated by Switch and Data.PAIX began operations in 1996 as Palo Alto Internet Exchange in Palo Alto, California, and was owned and operated by Digital Equipment Corporation, or DEC...
  
  , a service provided by telecommunications provider Switch and Data
  Switch and Data
  Switch and Data Facilities Company, Inc. was a U.S. public corporation that provided network-neutral data centers and Internet exchange services to network-centric businesses.. Switch and Data was acquired by Equinix in 2010....
  
  via MMRs.
• A MMR in pictures (One Wilshire)