Internet gateway meets cabling challenge: Latin American market lures access providers and carriers - Special focus: cabling, wiring and enclosure

Communications News, Nov, 2001 by Sean Kelly

Building a Tier-1 network access point (NAP) for LatinAmerica's Internet traffic--and a massive telecommunications center to house the NAP and other carriers--can present a daunting cabling project. NAPs are major Internet interconnection points that allows all Internet access providers and carriers to exchange traffic.

Several carriers--among them AT&T, Cable & Wireless, Global Crossing, Sprint and EPIK Communications--formed the NAP of the Americas Consortium. The consortium, now boasting 110 members, commissioned Terremark Worldwide, Miami, FL, to build the Technology Center of the Americas (TECOTA) and the Tier-1 NAP.

Terremark managed to pull off the task. The company developed TECOTA, a 750,000-square-foot, telecom monument in Miami. On one floor is NAP of the Americas, a carrier-neutral facility whose Terremark owners hope will capitalize on a burgeoning market among Latin America's 500 million-plus inhabitants.

The project has its roots in a state-led initiative to attract high-tech business to Florida. Carriers who were on a governor's task force proposed building a Tier-1 NAP in southern Florida--a move that proved successful in attracting high-tech firms to Northern Virginia. With links coming ashore from such carriers as Global Crossing, 360 Networks and Telefonica--as well as cables from Europe and Africa--southern Florida was a prime candidate for the NAP.

"Packets traveling from Ecuador to Paraguay had to go via Northern Virginia or New York, and then travel all the way back down," says Monty Bannerman, Terremark CTO. "All of these industry fiber systems need a place to exchange traffic."

A further incentive, to building the NAP was Latin America's projected Internet growth. IDC, for example, looks for that market to surge from $500 million in 2000 to $2.5 billion by 2004. In addition, the region's international Internet bandwidth grew by almost 480% to 16.1 Gbps in the past year, according to TeleGeography--compared to 174% worldwide growth.

FROM THE GROUND UP

The $109-million building was constructed from the ground up--unlike other telecom hotels located in refurbished buildings. Telcordia Technologies, Morristown, NJ, designer of two other Tier-1 NAP facilities, handled TECOTA's architecture and engineering.

Within 10 months, a six-story, hurricane-proof communications fortress stood on the former parking lot for the Miami Arena. "There are no windows, only penetrations to let air in and out," Bannerman says. "The walls are 18-inch-thick concrete. A 12-million-pound concrete slab is on top of the roof." Five upper floors are reserved for telecom space, with the $70 million NAP of the Americas facility taking the entire second floor, and Global Crossing the top floor.

The cabling required for TECOTA and the NAP is as imposing as the building. "There are eight duct banks into this building," Bannerman says. "Each has 48 conduits--and each of those can hold nine inner ducts." With one inner duct holding a 432-count fiber cable, 1.5 million fibers can come into the building.

CommScope in Hickory, NC, the project's fiber and copper cable supplier, says there will be between 300,000 and 600,000 fibers installed in the building upon the project's completion. The company is providing CAT 6 unshielded twisted-pair copper, indoor/outdoor single-mode and multimode fiber, and 735 Series DS3 coaxial cable.

Terremark also runs the building's cross-connect system and peering fabric for Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

"Because the facility is so huge, we had to put in two meet-point rooms and a peering room," Bannerman says. In the center, there is an optical cross-connect system and Foundry Networks core switching for the peering fabric.

"The meet-point rooms have state-of-the-art fiber and copper distribution," he says. "At each corner of the building you have distribution systems off the core. Overhead, there is a totally custom-designed cable plant distribution system. We can track every strand of copper and fiber."

He adds, "When other tenants want to connect to each other, they come up and down our risers to either the peering fabric or cross-connect systems."

Also, there are 120 Cisco routers in the building so far, Bannerman notes. Installing customer servers will come in the next phase of the project. "We're doing carrier PoPs--switching and transmission and routing now," he adds. The NAP has nearly 60 of its own enterprise-class Sun servers, Bannerman states.

CABLE-MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE

Such an extensive cabling system can be attractive to carriers looking to locate near the NAP--as more than 40 have already signed up to do. It also presents a major management challenge.

"When we went to get a cable-management system, we could not find one that had the capacity necessary to record all cable runs in the building," Bannerman recalls. "We had to have one especially built for us by Telcordia.

"Think of all the fiber spilling out of those two central banks coming into the meet-point rooms" he continues. "If we had gone with the traditional approach, we would have ended up with the meet-point rooms consuming a very significant part of our revenue-bearing floor space."