Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

Sat Feb 2 21:11:55 UTC 2013

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

> I'm spotty on mailing lists since most of my time is spent building
> these kinds of networks.

Showoff.  :-)

> 1) Talk to more vendors than just Calix, especially if they're quoting
> their Ethernet density on the C7. Also, keep in mind that port density may
> or may not be relevant to your situation since space for muni shelves isn't
> usually a problem. Port density is much more important if you're deploying
> in existing telco enclosures but muni networks tend (not universally
> of course) to reuse existing city infrastructure building to house the
> nodes of their network. Please note that I am not reccomending against
> Calix, they're a good solution in many cases, but AE is not a strong point on
> the C7. The E7 and the B series, which is the old Occam product, is much
> better than the C7. For that matter I wouldn't consider doing a new
> build on the C7 since that platform's EoL can't be too far in the future.

I hope I said "E7"; it's what I meant to say.  Yes, I wasn't going to 
stop at Calix; I'm just juggling budgetary type numbers at the moment;
I'll have 3 or 4 quotes before I go to press.  It's a 36 month project
just to beginning of build, at this point, likely.

Assuming I get the gig at all.

> 2) I have no idea who told you this, but this is completely and utterly
> incorrect in nationwide terms. If you have a specific layer 3 provder
> in mind that tells you they want a GPON hand off then that's fine, but
> ISPs in general don't know what GPON is and have no gear to terminate that
> kind of connection.

Other people here, said it.  If nothing else, it's certainly what the
largest nationwide FTTH provider is provisioning, and I suspect it serves
more passings than anything else; possibly than everything else.

But it doesn't matter either way, except in cross-connects between my MDF
and my colo cages; except for GPONs apparent compatibility with RF CATV
delivery (which I gather, but have not researched) is just block-upconvert,
I don't care either way; there's no difference in the plant buildout.

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