Introduction to Point of Presence and Network Access Point

Point of presence is a fundamental block of the telecommunication domain. You must be aware of this concept. If you want to system design for video content delivery like YouTube, Netflix or Hotstar.com then you must learn what is PoP and how this helps to propagate massive amounts of content across the globe with faster performance and lower latency.

What is the internet?

The internet is a massive network of interconnected smaller networks.

What is the Point of Presence (PoP)?

Point of Presence (PoP) is the Network Interface Point between communicating entities. A PoP is located in a data-center that houses servers, routers, network, switches, multiplexers and other network interface equipment. PoPs are located at colocation centers and Internet exchange points. A PoP is the local access point for an Internet Service Provider (ISP). PoP consists of high-speed telecommunications equipment that  helps customers to connect to the internet via their ISPs.

(image taken from https://networkencyclopedia.com/point-of-presence-pop/ )

Point of Presence in Action example

Chris is watching Sky News on his laptop, Chris Internet Service Provider (ISP) is Verizon Fios internet service provider. So Chris is part of Verizon Internet’s large network. When Cris types www.skynews.com his request first goes to  Verzon’s Point of Presence. But the sky news site is on another network. It is on skynews web servers.

What is Network Access Point (NAP)?

So we have 2 different networks. Each one has a point of presence. But how does Chris's request get on to the Sky’s Network?

We need a Network Access Point (NAP) , a NAP is a building where Internet Service Providers can switch information on to each other’s network. Now Chris’s request can get all the way over to skynews.com by using the NAP. And  skynews.com can get all the way back to Chris's computer.

And there are thousands of PoPs and NAPs all around the world, helping us all stay connected.

(image taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUD8U7eLbQ0&ab_channel=BrooksBankict)

What is a Colocation Center?

Colocation Center is a type of  data center also called a “Carrier Hotel”. Colocation  facilities provide equipment, space, bandwidth for rental to retail customers. Colocation facilities also provide space, power, cooling and physical security for the server, storage and networking equipment to other companies.

Summary

So when you are social networking, shopping or surfing the web, you are using lots of interconnected, smaller networks. AWS CloudFront has more than 200 PoP across the globe helping customers to deliver content faster with lower latency and high performance. In AWS PoP also provides DDoS Protection, Attack Mitigation and certificates management features. Amazon prime videos are delivered via AWS PoP only.