'ITS Communications Equipment' includes the communications hardware and software that supports secure, reliable communications. It provides the layered protocols and communications services and includes the physical network plant and network hardware that supports ITS communications. It also encompasses security services that protect communications and the management services that support network management. This physical object allows transportation stakeholders that are implementing their own communications solution to represent this implementation in their ITS architecture. The communications capabilities provided by this physical object are frequently purchased from a third party provider. When communications is a purchased service, the hardware and software included in this physical object are largely transparent to transportation stakeholders and may be transparent to the ITS architecture.