Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

Jay Ashworth jra at baylink.com
Sun Feb 3 21:12:04 UTC 2013


---- Original Message -----
> From: "Scott Helms" <khelms at zcorum.com>

> > You're asserting that it is not practical to offer L1 optical
> > per-sub handoffs to L2/3 ISPs, because
> 
> I'm saying you can't build a working business model off of layer 1
> connections as your primary offering in almost all cases for a muni
> network. I am hedging my bet here because I don't know your city's
> topology, density, growth, goals or a hundred other factors that might
> make you the 1 exception to the rule.

Oh.

I'm not trying to.

I'm trying to design and build a fiber plant that will *support* both
L1 point-to-point circuits for clients who want those, and L1 optical 
subscriber pair handoffs to ISPs who are either large enough, or 
technically inclined to want to take those and do their own access
gear either for RFoG GPON Multiplexing reasons, or whatever else
have you.

My primary service will be to run my own OLT and supply ONTs to subs,
and hand off aggregated 10/40GE over fiber to the ISPs in my colo (or
somewhere else in my city, if they want to do it themselves; there *is*, 
after all, going to be fiber to there :-).

> Let me see if I can explain it, since clearly I'm not getting my
> thoughts down in my emails well enough.

You've done it now.

> a) You WILL have physical layer issues. Some of these issues will be
> related to the initial construction of the fiber.

Sure.

> b) Other problems will because of changes that occur over time. These
> could be weather related (especially for aerial cable), but also
> vehicle hits to fiber cabinets, and occasionally fires. Depending on your
> location earthquakes, flooding, and other extreme "weather" may also be a
> factor.

Mostly flooding.  We're 15' AMSL.  Everything else, though, will be
completely below-grade, and we don't freeze, and I assume how much non-
backhoe fade you get can be directly related to how much you pay for 
the build?

And flooding doesn't affect pure glass, does it?

> c) No, WHEN something breaks it is hard and expensive to figure out where.
> This is true even if you're the layer 2 provider but it gets you out of
> the problem of it works $A_provider_gear but not $B_provider_gear. You're
> going to drive yourself nuts troubleshooting connections IF you do sign up
> several partners especially if they choose different technologies.

It would appear that opinions vary on this point.  You've clearly
had your hands on some of the gear, so I'm not discounting your opinion
by any means, but it seems that this may vary based on, among other
things, how well one engineers the plant up front.  This will *not* 
be a lowest-bidder contract.  Or I won't do it.

> d) No, it will always be your fault until you can prove its not. If you
> don't know how to troubleshoot the technology your L2 partners are using
> how can you ever do anything but accept their word that they have
> everything set up correctly?

As Owen notes, their hot-potatoing it will simply cost them more money,
so they have incentive to be cooperative in finding these problems, and
that helps almost an order of magnitude.

> > I can't see any difference between building it for their L2 access box and
> > my own. I simply don't believe (b). (c) seems questionable as well, so
> > I assume you have to mean (d).
> 
> There are lots of differences, especially related to troubleshooting.
> Remember, all of these devices are doing phase modulation (QAM, QPSK, etc)
> so a simple OTDR test (which is similar to checking SNR on a RF system)
> doesn't show many of the problems that prevent data connectivity on high
> speed connections.

No, but I'm pretty sure my Fluke rep will be happy to sell me boxes that 
*will* test for that stuff, and I will have a contractor to back me up.

Likely a division of whomever did the build, who will have reason to
want it to run well, as I'll have their name plastered all over everything
as well. :-)

> > > Dry pairs are impossible to order these days for a reason.
> >
> > Certainly: because you have to get them from incumbents, who don't
> > want you to use a cheap service to provide yourself something they could
> > charge you a lot more money for.
> >
> > You assert a technical reason?
> 
> Most of this is because the ILECs have gotten the regulations changed
> but they successfully used some legitimate technical reasons (and other
> less legitimate arguments) to get those rules changed.

In my experience of watching it go by, nearly every reason that an ILEC
has ever given for wanting something made illegal which would impact their
competitive position was made up, to a greater or lesser degree.

Many of them were public companies, and had open access imposed on them
(some would say unfairly; I waver), and it's *expected* that this would
be the case, but still...

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com         2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA               #natog                      +1 727 647 1274




More information about the NANOG mailing list