Port Speed vs Access Speed

Access Speed = Access is Physical. It’s the MAX speed rate potential for the physical port (GigabitEthernet = 1G, TenGigabitEthernet = 10G).

Port Speed = Port is Logical. How fast can data transfer.

Example:
10G Access Speed
5G Port Speed

The physical port will be a 10G port so this is Access of 10G. Think, what type of port am I plugging this fiber or copper hand-off into. But you can only transfer at 5G Port Speed.

Now when it comes to costs, specifically MPLS. You will have to pay for both Access and Port. Sometimes Port will show up as CDR. CDR stands for Committed Data Rate. It’s the Data Rate you are committing to. This is flexible so you can change it.

Below is an example from a Tier 1 ISP on how they wrote out a 10G Port with a 5G committed rate:

10 GIG access w/5 Gig port