ACTIVE PANEL DEMARCATION

摘要

In general, this disclosure describes a configurable cable patch panel, or “active panel,” that serves as a demarcation point between a customer area of a communication facility and a provider area of the communication facility. As described herein, the active panel may be dynamically configured to interconnect existing customer-side and provider-side connections to active panel ports in order to facilitate on-demand virtual connections within the communication facility between facility customers and/or between a facility customer and communication facility services. In some examples, a programmable network platform for the communication facility exposes a collection of interfaces by which customers may request virtual connections, which the programmable network platform provisions, in part, by configuring the active panel to interconnect select customer-side ports of the active panel with select provider-side ports of the active panel.

主权项

1. A cable patch panel comprising:
a software-configurable network interface device having a first side, a second side, a switch, and a configuration interface, the first side comprising a first plurality of network interface ports accessible only to a communication facility provider for a communication facility having an infrastructure network configured to interconnect a plurality of customer networks, the second side comprising a second plurality of network interface ports accessible only to a customer of the communication facility provider, and the configuration interface configured to, in response to receiving configuration data defining a connection between at least one port of the first plurality of network interface ports and at least one port of the second plurality of network interface ports, configure the switch to create the connection between the at least one port of the first plurality of network interface ports and the at least one port of the second plurality of network interface ports.