Cross-connects
A cross-connect is a physical cable between your rack and someone else's. The technology is trivial; the ordering is where time is lost.
When you need one
- Your own transit or peering. You buy connectivity from another carrier in the same facility and need a cable to them.
- A private link to another tenant — a partner, a payment provider, a customer of yours in the same building.
- An internet exchange port, if you are joining one yourself.
- Between your own racks, if you have more than one and want them connected without going through our network. See connecting your own servers.
If you only need to reach our network, you do not need a cross-connect — that is what your uplink already is.
What we need from you
Ordering one takes an exchange of details, and getting them right the first time is the difference between a day and a fortnight:
- The other party — their name and their own reference for the order. They usually have to confirm it from their side too.
- Their demarcation point: building, suite, rack and panel position. Exact.
- Media and connector: single-mode or multi-mode fibre, LC or SC, or copper. Single-mode LC is the common case.
- How many, and whether you want a redundant second one on a separate path.
- Speed and optics. Who supplies the modules at each end, and that both ends agree — a long-reach optic facing a short-reach one does not work.
The details people forget
- Optics are not included. Decide who buys them and make sure the wavelengths and reach match at both ends.
- A redundant pair should take a diverse path. Two cables in the same bundle protect against an optic, not against a cable tray.
- Label both ends. Your rack, their rack, and your own documentation — see naming and labelling.
- Cross-connects are usually billed monthly by the facility, for as long as they exist. Cancel the ones you stop using; they are easy to forget and they keep billing.
- Lead time is the facility's, not ours. Days, sometimes longer. Order before you need it — see capacity planning.
Bringing it up
When the cable is in, check the optical levels before blaming anyone:
ethtool -m on your interface shows transmit and receive power. A dark
receive level means a patch that was not completed, a dirty connector, or a mismatch
in the optics. See link speed and errors.
Then agree addressing and, if it is a BGP session, the session details with the other party.
Ask us first
Open a ticket with what you are trying to achieve rather than a part number. We know the facility, we know what is involved, and we will tell you if there is a simpler way — which there sometimes is, particularly if the other party is already reachable over our network.
Still stuck? Mail support@novogara.com — an engineer answers, at any hour. Back to the knowledge base