Service Demarcation for the Small Cell Era

- The Demarcation Point

Traditional landline phones still implore the use of wiring and hardware to establish connections. In doing this, it is often hard to differentiate where line and network ownership begins and ends. Exactly how much of the network belongs to the company, and how much belongs to the customer? The way to discern this difference is by using the Demarcation Point.  

The Demarcation Point is the physical point where the public network ends and the private network of a customer begins. Simply put, the Demarcation Point, or Demarc, marks the point where the customer’s network interfaces with the network owned by another company or additional party. While the locational definition of this point can vary depending on region, the Demarc is typically located at the point where the cable physically enters a building, or the customer’s premises. 

To deliver voice and data network services, telecom carriers will connect their network to a customer’s network at a demarcation point. In many cases, media and network protocol conversion must also take place at the demarcation point as customer LANs are connected to carrier circuit or IP networks. Demarcation points play a critical role in the quick repair of network faults as test equipment can be used to determine if a problem is on the customer or carrier side of the network.  

- Network Interface Device (NID) 

Ethernet demarcation devices are deployed by service providers or Ethernet service providers at the point of connection between customer equipment and Ethernet wide area network (WAN) services. Ethernet demarcation devices are used for service configuration and management, and are also used to verify the performance characteristics of WAN services.

A network interface device (NID) can provide demarcation services for carrier networks, including carrier network termination and circuit protection along with test equipment access. These features are added to media and network protocol capabilities that are at the heart of a NID. These devices are available as stand-alone or as chassis-based systems that feature remote network management capabilities. They support either telecom circuit switched services (DS3, ..) or Carrier Ethernet technology.

- Carrier Ethernet Demarcation for LTE and 5G Mobile Backhaul

LTE/5G services are delivered over fiber optic backhaul to small cells and macro cell towers deployed throughout the Ethernet mobile backhaul and radio access network (RAN). Due to the demanding performance requirements of LTE/5G services, the carrier Ethernet network interface device (NID) is deployed as a demarcation device to provide carrier-grade performance monitoring, fault management and timing synchronization.

The NID supports wireless backhaul Service Level Agreements (SLAs), reducing operating costs and capital expenditures when deploying small cells and cell towers in various network topologies. 

In the mobile backhaul demarcation for 5G/LTE applications, the Mobile Network Operator (MNO) owning the Radio Access Network (RAN) that connects the base stations to the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) network needs to ensure performance requirements for latency, latency variation, loss and availability. To ensure these requirements are met, MNOs deploy network interface devices (NIDs) at demarcation points to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) for access services.