A point of presence is an artificial demarcation point

Demarcation point

In telephony, the demarcation point is the point at which the public switched telephone network ends and connects with the customer's on-premises wiring. It is the dividing line which determines who is responsible for installation and maintenance of wiring and equipment -- customer/subscriber, or...

 or interface

Network interface

Network interface may refer to:* Network interface controller, the device a computer uses to connect to a computer network* Network interface device, a demarcation point for a telephone network...

 point between communications entities. It may include a meet-me-room

Meet-me-room

A "meet me room" is a place within a colocation centre where telecommunications companies can physically connect to one another and exchange data without incurring local loop fees...

.

In the US, this term became important during the court-ordered breakup of the Bell Telephone system

Modification of Final Judgment

In United States telecommunication law, Modification of Final Judgment is the August 1982 agreement approved by the court settling United States v. AT&T, a landmark antitrust suit, originally filed on January, 14, 1949 and modifying the previous Final Judgment of January 24, 1956...

. A point of presence was a location where a long-distance carrier (IXC) could terminate services and provide connections into a local telephone network (LATA

Local access and transport area

Local access and transport area is a term used in U.S. telecommunications regulation. It represents a geographical area of the United States under the terms of the that precipitated the breakup of the original AT&T into the "Baby Bells" or created since that time for wireline...

).

An Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 point of presence is an access point to the Internet. It is a physical location that houses server

Server (computing)

In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...

s, routers, ATM

Asynchronous Transfer Mode

Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a standard switching technique designed to unify telecommunication and computer networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing, and it encodes data into small, fixed-sized cells. This differs from approaches such as the Internet Protocol or Ethernet that...

 switches and digital/analog call aggregators. It may be either part of the facilities of a telecommunications provider that the Internet service provider

Internet service provider

An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

 (ISP) rents or a location separate from the telecommunications provider. ISPs typically have multiple PoPs, sometimes numbering in the thousands. PoPs are also located at Internet exchange point

Internet Exchange Point

An Internet exchange point is a physical infrastructure through which Internet service providers exchange Internet traffic between their networks . IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic which must be delivered via their upstream transit providers, thereby reducing the average per-bit...

s and colocation centre

Colocation centre

A colocation centre or colocation center , is a type of data centre where equipment space and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers...

s.