Planning for community-built networks

Thu Apr 26 19:20:32 UTC 2001

I'm curious how much grass-roots last-mile efforts like
community-funded networks are being factored into
near-future network planning.

In the two months I've been at my new job (network architect
for Utah Education Network), I've been amazed at how much
infrastructure activity is going on very quietly within
communities. A lot of this is motivated by frustration with
the lack of commercial infrastructure investment except in
the most lucrative business areas, and a realization that
there is not (and may never be) a business case to invest
beyond those areas.  Also relates to
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/04/26/0446240.shtml

In Utah (which not be representative) I'm aware of 12-15
such projects that are either under construction or will be
completed in the next 1-3 years. These projects are running
GigE to schools and govt, 10/100Mb Ethernet to homes and
businesses.

Community networks differ from traditional MANs in at least
two ways: they are oriented towards wide-scale connectivity,
usually of underserved areas (where MANs typically service
dense business areas); and they appear to have more momentum
in under-served geographies (ie non-NFL cities, and rural
areas). In Utah, only 2 or 3 of the projects are urban, most
are in communities on the urban fringe and in rural areas.

Beyond driving the need for more bandwidth, especially in
areas that don't have large pipes to the Net, these projects
have the potential to make fundamental changes in the
importance of local infrastructure. The biggest change may
be to show that Geography Does Matter more than we think.
The applications these networks will be used for are not
just eBay and Amazon, it's video conferencing, community
meetings, video on-demand, education, telemedicine, and
many more important ones unimagined today.

At least half the projects I'm aware of are looking for a
local interconnect (ie Community Internet Exchange /
Regional Exchange Point) to hand off traffic to other
community, educational and commercial networks in the area.
The national-level networks peer at such a course
granularity that the majority of community network
applications (video conferencing, video-on-demand,
education, telemedicine) would fail for latency and
performance reasons unless everyone connected to the same
backbone.

And there's your day's course in community networks. ;)

Again, curious if anyone is seeing this on their radar and
considering it in near- or long-term infrastructure
planning.

Pete.