Cross-Connects and Meet-Me Rooms, Explained

If you colocate in a carrier hotel like 60 Hudson Street or 165 Halsey Street, two terms come up constantly: the meet-me room and the cross-connect. Understanding them makes ordering connectivity far less confusing.

What is a meet-me room?

A meet-me room (MMR) is the neutral space in a building where carriers and providers physically interconnect. Instead of every tenant running cable to every other tenant, everyone brings their network to the MMR, and connections are made there. In a major carrier hotel the MMR is the reason the building is valuable: dozens of networks are reachable from one room.

What is a cross-connect?

A cross-connect is a physical cable, copper or fiber, that links your equipment to another party inside the building, usually through the MMR. Common uses:

• Connecting your cabinet to a specific carrier for internet or transport
• Reaching a cloud on-ramp or an internet exchange
• Linking your gear to a customer or partner in the same building

You typically order a cross-connect from the building or MMR operator, specifying the two endpoints (your rack and port, and the far-end provider and port). There is usually a one-time install fee and a recurring monthly charge, though some buildings offer low- or no-recurring cross-connects as a selling point.

Where remote hands fits in

The physical side of a cross-connect, running and dressing the cable from your equipment to the demarcation point, testing the link, and confirming the light, is exactly the kind of work a remote-hands technician does when your team is not on-site. When you order a cross-connect, we can:

• Run and label the patch from your cabinet to the assigned port
• Insert and seat the correct optic for the link type
• Test continuity and light levels, and confirm the far end is up
• Clean and inspect fiber ends, a frequent cause of a link that will not come up

A few tips before you order

• Know your rack and port assignments and the far-end provider details before the tech arrives.
• Match the media and connector type (single-mode vs. multimode, LC vs. SC) to avoid a return trip.
• Ask the building about install lead times; MMR work is often scheduled by the operator.

We handle cross-connect and cabling work across the carrier hotels and datacenters we serve. Find your facility or tell us what you need connected.