Public Interest Networks (was: Re: Consortium sheds light on dark fiber's potential)

Wed Nov 24 19:22:55 UTC 2004

Vicky, I apologize if I am hijacking your thread.

Is it just me or does all this talk of Research (and other Public 
Interest) Networks and logical separation by layer 1/2 leave [everyone] 
nonplussed?

How is logical separation of a network [say via MPLS] much different 
than using a lambda to do the same thing? It seems kind of dumb to me 
that a network that is spending the money to buy capacity is selling a 
2.5G or 10G wave to universities as any kind of improvement... I'm not 
even sure they could do it at a better price than a desperate telco that 
is selling the underlying fiber in the first place.

Engineering idea: All the constituent folks do the same network, but 
build it as a single logical network, with say all 40x10G Lambdas on it. 
Everyone is given a 2.5G or 10G MPLS tunnel with the ability to use all 
unused bandwidth that is available on the network at that time... That 
would at least have some legs and create some value for having more 
membership.

This smacks me as similar to Philadelphia wanting to deploy universal 
WiFi and charging $20-$25/month for it -- a free network to the city 
makes sense, afterall they pay taxes -- a psuedo-commercial service, 
what's the point? Do these government (and other so-called Public 
Interest) networks really make sense in the U.S. or is everyone still 
stuck in a timewarp when/where the NSFnet made sense because no one 
(commercially) could/would step up to perform the same function.

Hopefully there is some operational content in there... If you don't see 
an on-list response from me, you probably know why.

Deepak Jain
AiNET

Vicky wrote:
> 
> 
> http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=53700951
> 
> 