In the bowels of the world's most densely populated Meet-Me room -- a room where over 260 ISPs connect their networks to each other -- a phalanx of cabling spills out of its containers and silently pumps the world's information to your computer screen. One tends to think of the internet as a redundant system of remote carriers peppered throughout the world, but in order for the net to function the carriers have to physically connect somewhere. For the Pacific Rim, the main connection point is the One Wilshire building in downtown Los Angeles.

If this facility went down, most of California and parts of the rest of the world would not be able to connect to the internet. Tour one of the web's largest nerve centers, hidden in an otherwise nondescript office building.

Despite being the main hub of the internet for the entire Pacific Rim, One Wilshire looks like just another office tower in downtown Los Angeles. With the exception of the four floors devoted to law offices, the building is filled with servers and high-tech offices.



On the fourth floor of One Wilshire, hundreds of major network providers -- including AT&T, Sprint and Verizon -- all connect to one another and share traffic amongst their various worldwide networks. Networks have been connecting to each other in this room for more than 20 years.



A relatively new cable tray runs below the Meet-Me room ceiling. Cabling stewardship is a constant process at One Wilshire. Every time a connection is no longer needed, the connectors are cut, and the wire is pulled and recycled.


A network technician prunes cables from a tray in the never-ending quest to manage the Meet-Me room cross-connects. Every time a new carrier moves in to the room, it will invariably need to connect to many of the 260-plus other carriers. Ideally this is done through One Wilshire’s multiplexing system, thus limiting the amount of cabling.


The entire fourth-floor ceiling is densely packed with decades of cabling. Most of the cable trays are so full that the wiring spills out at every intersection.



This is what the Meet-Me room would look like without all the cables. Trays sit empty, waiting to be filled with copper and glass-fiber connections between various servers and switches.



This closet is filled with thousands of cross-connections. They allow the 260-plus network providers in the Meet-Me room to "peer" their networks. Without peering you would only be able to connect to websites hosted by your own service provider.



The copper-based connections within the building come here to get piped into fiber optics to run long distances. This hub allows all the carriers to cross-connect to different floors at One Wilshire and to other Meet-Me rooms in the United States.

Labels: Technology

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