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What are APIs?
Also known as: Application Programming Interface

APIs are mechanisms that enable two software components to communicate with one another, by using a set of definitions and protocols, essentially creating a common 'language'. There are four ways that APIs can work depending on when or why they are created. These are SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), RPC (Remote Procedure Calls), Websocket & REST APIs.

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What is BYOC?
Also known as: Bring your own Carrier

Bring your own Carrier (or BYOC) is a concept which has begun to gain more traction during the rise of collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams. As Microsoft's own calling plans do not suit every business, they have introduced 'Direct Routing' as a way for companies to integrate their existing telephony vendors into their technology ecosystem.

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What is Cloud Connect?
Also known as: Dedicated Cloud Access, IP Connect Direct Connect Dedicated Interconnect Fast Connect

In simple terms, cloud connect is a connection between a private network and a public cloud. In the past, all connections to the cloud were from a public network into a public cloud. But today, more technologies are available, including private and hybrid clouds.

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What is Cloud Prioritisation?
Also known as: IP Access with Cloud Prioritisation

Colt Cloud Prioritisation combines the benefits of optimised routing and direct peering infrastructure with traffic prioritisation between customer router and provider edge router. Customers can reach Microsoft Teams, Office 365, Azure, Windows Virtual Desktop, or any other Microsoft SaaS application with a consistent and SLA-backed user experience.

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What is Unified Communications (UC)?
Also known as: Cloud UC Intelligent Communications Unified Communications

Cloud UC (Unified Communications) refers to the leveraging of networking for the storage, and transmission of, data, video and voice. Over recent years, businesses have become less dependent on hardware based in a single location, and with the rise in hybrid working, communications functions are required not just in the office, but everywhere else.

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What is Dark Fibre?
Also known as: Unlit Fibre

A dark or unlit fibre refers to a spare piece of network fibre that is in the ground. Digging fibre optic network routes is a huge investment so cables are often laid with significant additional capacity that can be leased to companies in the future.

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What is DDoS?
Also known as: Distributed Denial of Service

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.

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What is digital infrastructure?
Also known as: DI

Digital infrastructure is the foundation of any connected business. It enables success, powers transformation and connects people around the world. It includes connectivity, cloud, compute, security, storage, SaaS and PaaS applications and much more.

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What is DWDM?
Also known as: Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing

DWDM, or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, has been a key technology evolution, as it allows multiple signals to run over a single strand of fibre, thus dramatically increasing the bandwidth potential of an individual network link.

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What is Edge Compute?
Also known as: Edge Computing

Edge Computing transforms and replaces your legacy on-premise Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) into an intelligent and flexible Cloud platform, capable of hosting security and network services, distributed Cloud services and latency sensitive enterprise Edge applications.

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What is Encryption?
Also known as: Data scrambling

Encryption is a way of 'scrambling' data to ensure that only the right people, or devices, can understand the information. In simple terms, encryption converts easily readable plaintext into something incomprehensible, whic is known as ciphertext.

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What is Ethernet?
Also known as: Layer 2 Networking

Colt's ethernet services create wide area/metropolitan area networks with LAN interface. Ethernet is the traditional technology for connecting devices in a wired local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). It enables devices to communicate with one another via a protocol (a shared network language).

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What is a Financial Extranet?
Also known as: Colt PrizmNet

An extranet is a private network used by organisations to provide external partners and other trusted third parties with secure and controlled access to their internal applications, processes and information. Colt's financial extranet, PrizmNet, connects exchanges and other providers of financial content (including market data, research and other services) to an ecosystem of over 10,000 capital markets firms worldwide.

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What is FIPS-certified?
Also known as: n/a

The Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 (or FIPS 140-2) is a cryptography standard that non-military U.S. federal agencies, as well as government contractors and service providers, must comply with in order to work with any federal government entities that collect, store, transfer, share and disseminate sensitive but unclassified (SBU) information.

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What is high bandwidth?
Also known as: High-speed

Bandwidth, typically measured in bits, kilobits, or megabits per second, is the rate at which data flows over the network. This is a measure of throughput (amount per second) rather than speed (distance traveled per second).

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What is Hub & Spoke?
Also known as: One to Many

Ethernet Hub and Spoke is a ‘one to many’ architecture that offers a cost-effective solution to connect multiple services/locations (spokes) to a central site through a single, aggregated interface.

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What is Hybrid Cloud?
Also known as: Multicloud

A hybrid cloud is a mixed computing environment where applications are run using a combination of computing, storage, and services in different environments—public clouds and private clouds, including on-premises data centers or “edge” locations. Hybrid cloud is rapidly becoming the cloud model of choice for organisations seeking the best of all worlds. But if a hybrid or multi-cloud deployment is not supported by the right connectivity, then a poor experience can result and expected dividends fail to materialise.

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What are Inbound Numbers?
Also known as: Business phone numbers Inbound voice

Inbound Voice is a cloud-based telephony service for both geographic and non-geographic numbers that provides online access to a full range of call routing, monitoring and management tools; supporting your organisation to provide high quality customer service. Inbound numbers are important for organisations as many people still prefer calling a business to receive support, make a purchase, or to get information.

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What Are Leased Lines? A Buyer’s Guide
Also known as: IP Access Dedicated Internet Access

A leased line is a dedicated connection that provides a private, fixed-bandwidth data link exclusively for your business’s use. Unlike shared services such as standard broadband, a leased line does not have traffic contending for bandwidth, ensuring consistent high speeds and reliability.

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What is a local breakout?
Also known as:

A local breakout is an access point located as close to the user as possible. In practical terms, it enables organisations to offload internet-based traffic from local branches and remote offices. Instead of routing this traffic through a centralised data centre, it is sent directly to the internet via a local ISP. Find out more about why this matters.

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What is Network as a Service?
Also known as: NaaS

Network as a Service is a cloud-based service model that allows organisations to outsource their networking infrastructure. Instead of building and maintaining their own network components, businesses can rent network services from cloud providers.

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What is Optical?
Also known as: Layer 1, Backbone

Available in Europe and Asia, the Colt Optical Portfolio provides the very highest levels of network performance by permitting transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data rates) than wire cables. Colt’s high bandwidth optical network services portfolio directly address the requirements of enterprises, carrier operators and GCN players requiring connectivity between major sites and data centres.

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Understanding SASE: A comprehensive overview for modern network security
Also known as: Secure Access Service Edge

SASE is the convergence of modern WAN services and network security services into a single cloud based service model. SASE has emerged as a concept in a response to growing challenges of digital business transformation, edge computing and workforce mobility as organisations face increasing pressure to converge services in order to reduce complexity, improve speed and agility, enable multi-cloud networking and secure new SD WAN architecture.

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The ultimate guide to SD WAN
Also known as: SDN Software Defined Networking

SD-WAN is a networking technology that enables you to manage & optimise the connectivity of multiple sites across different network transport services, such across the public internet, MPLS or LTE. Now, next-generation SD-WAN is here, and it uses the cloud to its fullest potential.

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What is SDN?
Also known as: Software-defined Networking

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a network architecture approach that enables an organisation’s network to be centrally controlled using software applications. This means that operators can manage their networks holistically, regardless of underlying network technology.

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What is Smart Manufacturing?
Also known as: Industry 4.0

Smart Manufacturing is a technology-driven approach that utilises Internet-connected machinery to monitor production processes. Smart Manufacturing identifies opportunities for automation, and uses data analytics to improve performance.

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What is UCaaS?
Also known as: Unified Communications as a Service

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is a cloud delivery model that brings unified communications, like chat, calls, file sharing, and video conferencing tools, into a single interface or platform. This allows you to bring the features of UC, without needing any on-premises equipment or infrastructure.

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What is Universal CPE?
Also known as: Universal Customer Premises Equipment

uCPE, or Universal Customer Premises Equipment, is a general purpose platform that integrates multiple (previously physical) functions virtually, to any site on a network.

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What is CCaaS?
Also known as:


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What is Zero Trust?
Also known as:

In order to cope with changing network access models, security systems have had to adapt to a concept that "all devices and applications that connect to servers and internal networks are potential threats, and should be treated as untrusted". In this guide, we summarise the key principles and characteristics of Zero Trust.

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